Apple School Manager

[Brimstone]

Saw a preview of Apple School Manager yesterday here's the main points...

 

Schools already with either a DEP or VPP account or both don't bother trying to sign up yet, it will be refused by Apple. Apple will be touch very shortly via email to tell you what to do to migrate your accounts across, there will be no requirement to download/upload certs to link to your MDM.

 

Schools who do not have DEP/VPP can sign up for Apple School Manager now, just bear in mind some bits like shared iPad are also down to your MDM support so may not work as yet. There are a few that already support Apple's Classroom App such as Casper Suite

 

Caching Server is CRITICAL to shared iPad working well in your school.

 

Shared iPad is very, very quick and impressive, if you have students with accessability tools turned on then these will arrive when that student logs into the iPad.

 

Apple have put together a very deployment guide in iBooks format, link below..

 

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/education-deployment-guide/id1092741957?mt=11

[PR-UK]

Anyone who's already got access to it, do you know how it handles managed Apple IDs?

 

1. In the US from what I read a managed Apple ID for under 13s needed parental approval via a valid parent email address. Is this the case in the UK and in School Manager?

 

2. If we have students/teachers with existing school email based Apple IDs can these be sucked in to Apple School Manager?

 

Thanks

[dhicks]

Saw a preview of Apple School Manager yesterday

 

Me, too - I was at the afternoon event last Thursday - I'm just getting around to going through my notes.

 

Apple will be touch very shortly via email to tell you what to do to migrate your accounts across

 

I was a bit unclear about the kind of timescale they considered "very shortly" - this week, this month, or sometime this year.

 

Caching Server is CRITICAL to shared iPad working well in your school.

 

Shared iPad: you'll be able to set an iPad as a "shared iPad" during the initial switch-on-and-join-organisation stage. If you have an existing iPad you'll have to reset / wipe it and go through the process from the start. Shared iPad is the part that has the minimum hardware specifications - basically a new iPad with 32GB minimum of storage. This is to so the iPad can cache user's iCloud profiles. When you set a shared iPad up you will specify the minimum number of users this iPad will cache, and at the moment with 5GB of iCloud storage per user that's 5GB per user.

 

When a user logs on to a shared iPad, their iCloud profile is synced to that iPad. I get the impression this is a background process, they aren't prvented from logging on while the iPad downloads 5GB of data from iCloud. The next ime that user comes back to use that iPad, their profile image or initials will be displayed on the lock screen, so if you have a class set of iPads you'll have each child logging back in to the iPad they used last time, made easier by having their picture on the front. That's not an abolsute requirement, it just saves having to re-cache their profile when they log on to a new iPad.

 

Syncing happens in the background, even when the iPad is charging. Someone pointed out that you should make sure your charging solution (i.e. generally a big, metal, opaque-to-WiFi cabinet on wheels) has WiFi reception.

 

Adding a caching server to your network should speed up the process of people logging in as each iPad now just has to contact your local caching server for most content rather than getting the whole thing from iCloud. Caching server scales out quite nicly, seemingly, so you can use a single Mac Mini to start with and just add more when you think you need to. As pointed out above, caching server was said to be vital, but then they allowed that we might not notice the difference on our 200 Mb/sec symetrical fibre leased line split between 400 pupils.

 

The photo of each pupil used by shared iPad is provided by your MDM system - Apple specify the MDM protocol and leave implementation up to vendors, including provision of pupil profile images. I was rather unclear as to whether providing pupil login data was part of the MDM or handled by Apple itself - I think Apple, as you seemed to add pupil data via a web-based interface. This interface has the ability to upload a CSV file but no further automation that I could see. There are talks of direct links to your MIS, probably SIMS, but I don't know how other systems would be provided for. There doesn't seem to be a public API available for us to extract data from our MIS and add it to Apple's system ourselves. MDM suppliers are still working on adding new features to match features made available in Apple's MDM protocol, the details of which seem to be rather fluid at the moment, so you can understand MDM vendors waiting until things are a bit more finalised until they release new features.

 

There doesn't seem to be any single sign-on mechanism available for web-based resources to get the current Apple ID that the people at the event knew about, that could be something that simply needs further investigation.

 

The teacher can request a password change for a pupil - if I understand correctly, that generates a password-reset email that the pupil can then use to reset their password rather than the teacher having the ability to directly reset the pupil's password.

 

Group / class data can be brought over from your MIS (but not, by the looks of it, Active Directory). That doesn't match up physical devices with classes, though. A teacher can create "dynamic groups", which seems to be a way to make ad-hoc sub-groups out of an existing class group. You seem to have to have your pysical class already grouped in the system, though - you can't auto-discover groups by grouping the devices physcially in front of you (you can discover via Bluetooth, but that might cover the classrooms next door, too).

 

Apple Classroom gives you a set of features very like Impero / LanDesk / ABTutor, where you can see pupil devices. You can get a pupil's device to mirror to yours or to an Apple TV (or AirServer, etc) via AirPlay, but annoyingly you can't do the other way around (teacher -> pupil) - we could have done with that for some pupils with specific special needs. Interestingly, device discovery for AirPlay between teacher and pupil devices seems to be done over Bluetooth rather than wireless, although I understand that AirPlay itself goes over wireless. This makes sense as you don't then get excessive broadcast traffic bouncing around your wireless network, just local Bluetooth traffic.

 

Apple spoke about the possibility of resellers offering leased equipment, an all-in-one service where you get a bunch of iPads along with support, hardware renewed after three years. An example price (including VAT) would be around £3,000 per month for 10 class sets of 18 iPads - might be a good option for a smaller school. There was no mention of how long the current top-specified hardware would last for, i.e. if we buy a bunch of new iPads now, do Apple garuntee they will meet minimum specifications for future versions of shared iPad / Classroom for the next 3/5/7 years?

[Bobby_Moore]

@Brimstone is there any update on existing VPP and DEP customers?

 

Having set our original setup sometime ago, would it be possible to generate a new account and run it alongside our existing install?

 

Best wishes,

[Brimstone]

@Brimstone is there any update on existing VPP and DEP customers?

 

Having set our original setup sometime ago, would it be possible to generate a new account and run it alongside our existing install?

 

Best wishes,

 

No I would wait until Apple contact you to tell you they have migrated your accounts, if you try and set them up again it may cause you even more problems

[ferryman]

I've been wrestling with the apple school manager website for weeks and have finally been verified!

 

Will keep my eyes posted on this thread cheers.

 

[ASGeek]

Hi ALL,

 

Can any advise if they have this up and running particularly shared devices please and if i may contact you for an insight of how the set process went. thanks

[Brimstone]

In the beta of what is now macOS Server, there is an added restriction to stop Bluetooth being turned off, so it seems that Apple are hearing what people are saying

[Jehanzeb]

So far my experience was not that great with Apple School manager. It doesn't allow to push apps via Meraki on a userbased scenario. Some suggested to turn to DEP route and then push apps but with *free version of Meraki, you cannot enable device based push of apps. There are other issues as well such as inability to delete accounts, you can make them inactive but cannot delete them. Another issue, if you by mistake setup an id and now you want to change it for example abc@[yourschooldomain].com and now you want to change it to abc@appleid.[yourschooldomain].com; the system allows you to change it on a face value but behind the scenes i.e. at the backend, it doesn't allow you to create/change the IDs (Trust me, I had to sit there and create alternative IDs one by one for entire Year groups!! - I hate this process every year). The DEP and VPP integration (maybe I am in wrong understanding this) doesn't seem to be working either. I was under the impression that we would only need to have one ID Apple School Manager but it seems School manager is just a 'single place' to have your VPP and DEP accounts' - not something I was looking forward to as it doesn't make my life any better.

 

Overall, I ditched the system for now and went back to the old way of pushing Configs using AC and using user based Meraki to push apps.

 

That said, I will keep an eye on ASM and see if things change over the period of time. So far, it's a No.

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

Edited September 24, 2016 by Jehanzeb

[RLR]

So far my experience was not that great with Apple School manager. It doesn't allow to push apps via Meraki on a userbased scenario. Some suggested to turn to DEP route and then push apps but with *free version of Meraki, you cannot enable device based push of apps. There are other issues as well such as inability to delete accounts, you can make them inactive but cannot delete them. Another issue, if you by mistake setup an id and now you want to change it for example abc@[yourschooldomain].com and now you want to change it to abc@appleid.[yourschooldomain].com; the system allows you to change it on a face value but behind the scenes i.e. at the backend, it doesn't allow you to create/change the IDs (Trust me, I had to sit there and create alternative IDs one by one for entire Year groups!! - I hate this process every year). The DEP and VPP integration (maybe I am in wrong understanding this) doesn't seem to be working either. I was under the impression that we would only need to have one ID Apple School Manager but it seems School manager is just a 'single place' to have your VPP and DEP accounts' - not something I was looking forward to as it doesn't make my life any better.

 

Overall, I ditched the system for now and went back to the old way of pushing Configs using AC and using user based Meraki to push apps.

 

That said, I will keep an eye on ASM and see if things change over the period of time. So far, it's a No.

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

 

The accounts are deleted 30 days after they've been made inactive. I still think they need to make it possible for us to delete them though.

 

I believe you can re-upload a csv file to change the apple ID/details of bulk users. The person_ID field is used to identify the user and if you make any changes on the CSV file, it will change it to the user mapped to the person_ID.

 

Also, if you only want to use ASM to setup managed apple ID's, you can use # to populate any "required" fields.

[PR-UK]

Anyone else having problems uploading their CSV files via SFTP?

 

We finally managed to get our SIMS data in to a format compatible with Apple School Manager on Thursday and created our accounts but the classes names were incorrect. When we tried to fix it by uploading an altered version of the data we didn't have permission to write to the SFTP server, tried a few times and couldn't get it to work and as of Friday the whole section to select SFTP in the Setup Assistant has a wheel of death followed by "Unable to connect to SFTP at this time. Wait a few minutes, then try to connect again" this is Apple School Manager itself connecting to Apples SFTP server!

[RLR]

Anyone else having problems uploading their CSV files via SFTP?

 

We finally managed to get our SIMS data in to a format compatible with Apple School Manager on Thursday and created our accounts but the classes names were incorrect. When we tried to fix it by uploading an altered version of the data we didn't have permission to write to the SFTP server, tried a few times and couldn't get it to work and as of Friday the whole section to select SFTP in the Setup Assistant has a wheel of death followed by "Unable to connect to SFTP at this time. Wait a few minutes, then try to connect again" this is Apple School Manager itself connecting to Apples SFTP server!

 

I'm currently trying to upload to the SFTP at the moment. I've managed to connect to the SFTP and uploaded my files to the dropbox folder but nothing seems to be happening in the ASM browser interface. Just says waiting for SFTP upload when I've already done it! Managed to successfully do it a couple weeks ago.

[ferryman]

Despite my application being accepted by Apple my status is still saying Apple will email me with the next step.

 

This has been since early June.

 

How long did ebveryone else have to wait for instructions on how to proceed from Apple?

 

I contacted their support who have said to go down the DEP and VPP route.

 

Any summary of everyones School Manager experience when enrolling would be great.

 

Cheers guys

[Brimstone]

Despite my application being accepted by Apple my status is still saying Apple will email me with the next step.

 

This has been since early June.

 

How long did ebveryone else have to wait for instructions on how to proceed from Apple?

 

I contacted their support who have said to go down the DEP and VPP route.

 

Any summary of everyones School Manager experience when enrolling would be great.

 

Cheers guys

 

 

When you sign up for ASM Apple will ask you for a verification contact of someone at your school who is authorised to enrol into the programme on the schools behalf. This can not be a network manager but has to either be a business manager or headteacher. Apple then email that person, with a verification link, once this is clicked Apple will then call and ask specifcally for that person, they must be available to answer, I would only assume that this process has broken down because Apple phoned, spoke to your receptionist who told them they were busy and could not answer the call or you've used your own email address as verification contact.

[Jehanzeb]

I have another question, when I created the managed IDs and then added them as VPP account holders under Meraki, after signing onto the iPads it never pushed any app, stating you do not have permission to install an App. This happened on both student and teacher managed IDs. How Did you manage to over come this issue? Additionally, how did you integrate SIMS accounts? When I tried to do it, it states SIS system but never gave an option for SIMS. Did you export users in csv from SIMS and then upload to ASM?

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

[RLR]

I have another question, when I created the managed IDs and then added them as VPP account holders under Meraki, after signing onto the iPads it never pushed any app, stating you do not have permission to install an App. This happened on both student and teacher managed IDs. How Did you manage to over come this issue? Additionally, how did you integrate SIMS accounts? When I tried to do it, it states SIS system but never gave an option for SIMS. Did you export users in csv from SIMS and then upload to ASM?

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

 

I'm not sure with Meraki as we use Casper suite. I know to install apps automatically you need to make sure the ipads are supervised.

 

Apple school manager only integrates with 2 MISs in America at the moment. Sims isn't available yet and when I've asked them about it they don't even seem interested. You'll have to use CSV's and upload via sftp.

[Brimstone]

I have another question, when I created the managed IDs and then added them as VPP account holders under Meraki, after signing onto the iPads it never pushed any app, stating you do not have permission to install an App. This happened on both student and teacher managed IDs. How Did you manage to over come this issue? Additionally, how did you integrate SIMS accounts? When I tried to do it, it states SIS system but never gave an option for SIMS. Did you export users in csv from SIMS and then upload to ASM?

 

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

 

Unless your MDM is as up to date as Casper Suite, (see below) a managed Apple ID CAN NOT be used to push apps and content as users can not access the App Store with them, so how on earth are you managing to sign into the store?

 

 

There is no direct sync yet between SIMS and Apple School Manager yet so you have to use CSV upload using a SFTP application.

 

(The very latest version of Casper Suite allows you to use Managed Apple ID's with iOS10 you don't even need to invite users into Managed Distribution)

Edited September 26, 2016 by Brimstone

[Jehanzeb]

I'm not sure with Meraki as we use Casper suite. I know to install apps automatically you need to make sure the ipads are supervised.

 

Apple school manager only integrates with 2 MISs in America at the moment. Sims isn't available yet and when I've asked them about it they don't even seem interested. You'll have to use CSV's and upload via sftp.

 

Thank you for a quick response. I supervised iPads initially using DEP and tried to push the apps but it wouldn't do it. Then I tried using AC to supervise and as soon as I entered the managed ID on supervised iPad it threw the same thing.

 

I think I will skip all this ASM until next year, Apple might fix a lot of issues.

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

[Jehanzeb]

Unless your MDM is as up to date as Casper Suite, a managed Apple ID CAN NOT be used to push apps and content as users can not access the App Store with them, so how on earth are you managing to sign into the store?

 

There is no direct sync yet between SIMS and Apple School Manager yet so you have to use CSV upload using a SFTP application

 

No need to sign into App Store, Meraki prompts you to enter Apple ID as soon as iPad starts. Nevertheless, it's silly not to provide option to push apps using managed IDs.

 

Kindest regards

 

J.

[Guest MD5T]

Just use apple manager and meraki the job nicely

[ferryman]

Yeah the verification process has all taken place.

 

My boss got a call from Apple who said it was all fine.

 

Got a meeting today with Apple though so might get a bit further.

 

Cheers for the reply though :-)

[RLR]

Managed to get apple school manager working and we've uploaded our csv files. Staff can see their classes and the students are all correct. The only issue we have is the Class names in the Apple Classrooms app are not correct. The names being displayed are completely different to what is showing in the ASM portal and Casper. Currently got a support call open with Casper to see what it might be. Unless anyone else has some ideas?

[PR-UK]

Yes same issue, initially we uploaded data to ASM in the format it wanted however all our classes were just called 'Art' or 'Biology' so a Biology teacher just had 10 instances of 'Biology' without anyway of knowing what was what.

 

So we changed the data so that class and course were completely unique, that now shows correctly in ASM but when we went to import that data to Casper it came back with every course having both the correct, and incorrect Class Name! e.g. Class Name - 'Biology - 10S-5A 11S-5A', Class ID - '11S-5A' Course Name - 'Biology - 10S-5A' Course ID - 'Biology'

 

We've left it with JAMF to investigate.

[RLR]

Yes same issue, initially we uploaded data to ASM in the format it wanted however all our classes were just called 'Art' or 'Biology' so a Biology teacher just had 10 instances of 'Biology' without anyway of knowing what was what.

 

So we changed the data so that class and course were completely unique, that now shows correctly in ASM but when we went to import that data to Casper it came back with every course having both the correct, and incorrect Class Name! e.g. Class Name - 'Biology - 10S-5A 11S-5A', Class ID - '11S-5A' Course Name - 'Biology - 10S-5A' Course ID - 'Biology'

 

We've left it with JAMF to investigate.

 

Did the same thing. It seems Casper uses the Course ID as the class display name so we have lots of Classes called the same thing in Casper.

[andyire]

Hi All,

 

I have just transitioned our DEP and VPP to ASM and have so far only sorted AirWatch . I would like to get the ball rolling with Apple Classroom. We are a SIMS school.

Can anyone tell me what format the exported SIMS CSV must be in for ASM to work ? Also what fields are required in the report ?

 

Thanks