hr32 Posted March 25, 2018 Posted March 25, 2018 Hi All I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on a question for me. I have a couple hundred Apple iPads currently managed by Meraki Systems Manager in our school. We currently use a free version which doesn't allow the use of Apple Classroom. As a school we have access to Office 365 and Microsoft Intune, which I've looked at changing to so we can use Apple Classroom. When looking at setting it up I found Apple Classroom requires Signed Certificates to enable it to work. So my question is.. Does anyone know an easy way to create certificates without having to buy them? Or perhaps is there a way around them, Meraki doesn't seem to require these certificates like Intune does. Any help or insight here would be fantastic Thanks in advance!
DavR Posted March 26, 2018 Posted March 26, 2018 Ok, bizarre twist.... It only seems to be certain website that cause it to freeze? Eg, BBC News is fine, Ultimate Guitar crashes within a few minutes!
Onellyjp Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 I'm wondering if you ever received an answer to this question? I am also looking at Intune for my MDM and am having difficulty understanding how Apple Classroom will be setup with this. There are virtually no setup guides out there and Intune support is "eh"...
Brimstone Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 Is the cert you are asking about the ones required to connect your Apple School Manager account with the MDM? MS Intune should have the ability to generate a Public Cert .pem which you download and then upload to ASM, this then creates a private cert .key which you download and upload back to Intune? Other than that there are no other certs involved? https://help.apple.com/classroom/ipad/2.0/#/cad6d39b9338
Onellyjp Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 No, linking Apple School Manager and Intune was easy peasy. We're talking about getting Apple Classroom setup for iPads. As part of the setup process Apple School Manager receives data from your SIS that creates teachers, students, and classes. This process sets up the managed AppleID and creates the structure that the MDM can use to push out handshake certificates between student and staff iPads, and links the teacher iPad to the admin created classes for that teacher. I'm not sure if the certs are used for the handshake between teacher and student devices, or if theyare used for something else, but the unique thing about Apple Classroom is that students don't need an app, so it relies on the management profiles and certs to authenticate between all systems.
Guest Guest Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 In Systems Manager you set up a profile with an Education payload that contains all the users.
Brimstone Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 No, linking Apple School Manager and Intune was easy peasy. We're talking about getting Apple Classroom setup for iPads. As part of the setup process Apple School Manager receives data from your SIS that creates teachers, students, and classes. This process sets up the managed AppleID and creates the structure that the MDM can use to push out handshake certificates between student and staff iPads, and links the teacher iPad to the admin created classes for that teacher. I'm not sure if the certs are used for the handshake between teacher and student devices, or if theyare used for something else, but the unique thing about Apple Classroom is that students don't need an app, so it relies on the management profiles and certs to authenticate between all systems. So it's not certs you require, there are none needed Apple Classroom uses Bluetooth and WiFi, as above said you need to enable the "Apple Education" payload on each device. Apple School Manager only syncs directly with a small number of MIS systems both in the US and here in the UK, Powerschool. If yours is not one of these then you have to do a CSV export from your MIS and then an SFTP upload of the spreadsheets. They must have the correct data so Apple have some templates you can download first to get your class MIS data into the correct format for instructors,classes and groups etc. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT207409 If that sounds like a lot of work then "some" MDM's like Jamf Pro let you manually create a class and add users in your MDM to that class, althogh this data does not sync with ASM. P.S. Teachers require Instructor accounts in ASM if you are syncing data from this
chazzy2501 Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 A slight detour here but do you get intune for free? I don't seem to have it in my o365 portal?
Onellyjp Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 I have the ASM 100% setup and configured properly with my SIS. That part is complete. I'm specifically tesing InTune as the MDM and configuring InTune to work with Apple Classroom. You are correct that Bluetooth is used to "connect the student iPads with the Teacher iPads, but what happens in the background is the exchange of a teacher and student certificate. In the prior version of InTune you would go in a create a student certificate and a teacher certificate. These were used by InTune when managing Apple Classroom and iOS devices. In the new version of InTune the old instructions do not apply... SO.. I have the ASM setup and linked to my SIS and I have the core ASM token tied into InTune, but now I need to leverage InTune to work with the admin controlled Apple Classroom. You are correct in other MDM's there are very specific "Apple Classroom" policies that can be configured, but my goal is to get it to work in InTune and not have to have an additional MDM. I hope this helps to clarify...
Andycat Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 A slight detour here but do you get intune for free? I don't seem to have it in my o365 portal? You need to buy it for FTE, then get it added on for students.
Brimstone Posted May 17, 2018 Posted May 17, 2018 (edited) I'm wondering if you ever received an answer to this question? I am also looking at Intune for my MDM and am having difficulty understanding how Apple Classroom will be setup with this. There are virtually no setup guides out there and Intune support is "eh"... I've just had a read of the instructions for Intune Education configuration profiles and it's so over complicated I'd dump it and use something easier. Because you are using MS Azure to host the MDM it asks you to create them very manually when most MDM's create a signing certificate automatically as part of the enrolment process. Just to give you an example, to do this in Jamf with previously enrolled Supervised iPads you would.... 1. Once in the correct format, upload CSV to ASM to create your classes, teachers etc 1. Tick the "Apple Education Configuration" payload and apply to devices in classes 2. Add Apple Classroom app to teacher devices and push out to iPads 3. Done Edited May 17, 2018 by Brimstone
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now