[ipad] No auto app-updates for apps pushed and managed by your MDM? Or is it restrictions...

[misterharrison]

Hi all

 

I had an interesting discussion with Meraki at BETT over the weekend. We are paying Meraki customers, which we use for managing 300+ iPads in a K-12 environment.

 

We thought that the reason apps were not automatically updating (when an update became available in the App Store) was something to do with the restrictions we have in place that prevent students installing or deleting apps. It's very annoying to have to manually push app updates from Meraki, when apps should be able to update automatically. Teachers' iPads, which don't have those restrictions in place, happily update their apps automatically as and when those updates appear.

 

However

 

Meraki told me that, in fact, since iOS 9.3, Apple have changed app-update behaviour so that apps that have been pushed by your MDM and which are managed by your MDM will not update automatically - updates have to be manually pushed from the MDM. They said this was true for all MDMs, not just Meraki. It seems odd that our teachers' iPads continue to happily auto update their apps, although I am going to check this again as I may be wrong!

 

Anyway, I was wondering:

 

Can anyone using another MDM (e.g. JAMF) confirm if apps will automatically update, even if they were pushed by the MDM and are managed by the MDM?

 

Also, has anyone found a way for apps to auto-update even if app-install restrictions are in place?

If so, which specific restrictions are you using?We have:

"Allow installing apps" unticked

"Allow in-app purchases" unticked

"Allow app removal" unticked

"Allow App Store" unticked

 

It must be a common requirement to have app-installation restricted but wanting existing apps to automatically update?

 

Thanks

 

Will

[Brimstone]

When you say "managed App" do you mean the "managed app' preference for most MDM's.

 

JamfPro does this already allbeit you have to enable this function from the JSS console.

 

Mobile Device App Updates - Casper Suite Administrator's Guide | JAMF Software

[misterharrison]

Yes, that does seem to be what I want!

It doesn't seem to be possible in Meraki, or, at least, there is no way to enable it explicitly.

I don't know if anyone else using Meraki has encountered this issue?

[charlie13561]

I only have a small number of iPads to you (60 to 300) but have not found a way in Meraki to get the apps to auto update, every so often I have to go around and manually update them via the apps store or delete and insert new in meraki apps management and then install them again.

 

its a pain but better than adding each app manaually