[ipad] iPAD Management

[protocol]

How do you all manage your school iPADS and what do you use to do it? Situation here is previous IT team all left over the summer (including Network Manager two days after I accepted my Technician job) and I've been slowly getting to grips with how everything is set up here. The school has two iPAD trolleys, one for junior site and one for secondary site that, as well as run entire network by myself, I have to manage too. Each iPAD has previously been given it's own unique cloud ID. Some of them won't accept the password and some are currently using a shared iCloud account. Some are on iOS 9 and some are on iOS 8. It's a right nightmare. How are yours configured with regards to iCloud accounts? I just want them set up all the same to make my job easier.

 

What I was thinking was either create an admin account for myself, and then a guest account for the students to use or remove all iCloud accounts and install a management system to manage them all so I can control what apps are installed, and when they and the iOS update themselves. The junior site is Reception to year 4 so the less passwords they have to put in the better. At the moment they are constantly prompted for passwords relating to the App Store.

 

The school is getting a brand new iMAC suite as well as a bunch of new iPAD's to add to my work load so really need to get a system in place so I can manage them all.

 

Any help will appreciated as I've never managed Apple devices over a network before.

[adamholt1]

We use a system called lightspeed for ipad managemnt and app deployment.

 

Does take a fair bit of seting up with enrolling, apple ids and creating users but once done it works a dream!!

 

Fairly cheap too at about £5 per device.

 

Deffo worth a look, let me know if want anymore info!!

 

Oh and good luck with the suite of iMac's, you'll need it lol!!

[RLR]

You should look into an MDM solution. I find with shared iPads it's better to use a mix of Apple Configurator 2 and an MDM. Use AC2 for initial settings such as wifi and then let the MDM do the rest.

 

As you're using shared devices you should also look into buying licenses (VPP) for apps and assign them at a device level. This will mean you don't need an apple ID at all for the iPads.

 

As you're getting a load of iMacs, it might be worth look at Casper MDM as it can be used to manage and image iMacs.

 

Make sure any new ipads/imacs you get are from an Apple Re-seller so that you can supervise devices over the air with apples Deployment enrollment program (DEP).

Edited February 15, 2016 by RLR

[SovietRussia]

We use one iCloud account for all 67 iPads we have on the network - they are all supervised with Apple Configurator and connect to Profile Manager as their MDM.