Aaaaarggggghhhh (Apple School Manager)

[Cazale]

Apple School Manager is, without question, the worst website/piece of software I've ever used and having wasted yet another full afternoon talking to support, I need to vent (forgive me).

 

We've recently spent a lot of our time installing iPads in various schools. Different configurations (some standalone, some shared). Even different MDMs. Something has gone wrong on every install, and every time it's stupid Apple School Manager.

 

Some recent examples of things that we have open (still open!) with Apple support:

 

- One school keeps getting username/password errors on the admin accounts (plural because after it happened the first time I added two more admin accounts). When this happens a couple of times, and I get through to support, they have me keep trying the different accounts and passwords, and they inevitably all get locked out. It then takes a full 2-3 weeks (!!!) to unlock the accounts. During the last support call he said "don't worry if you lock out this account too, we can reset it". I asked him if he was sure, because the other times it happened it took 2+ weeks to get the account unlocked. He confirmed he could definitely reset the account. The last account get's locked, he says "okay, now go to reset password". That doesn't work on admin accounts for ASM (I could have told him that if he'd explained fully!). 2-3 week wait for the accounts (plural) to get unlocked! Again! BTW, this happens completely randomly, and only on this one school. It will work with the u/p combination in a morning (cut and pasted from a secure password file), then in the afternoon it will just refuse to log in with the same account details. I've given up trying to get this fixed. It's been months.

 

- Another school we uploaded the SIMs database (using the Salamander tool). We got a couple of data errors that Salamander managed to solve for us, uploaded the data again and got "unknown server error" generated by Apple School Manager. Since getting that error the uploads have ceased to work. No logs are generated when we upload data (even manually SFTP'ing the data), and we no longer get the "updating data" dialogue. This has been logged multiple times (the responses are usually along the lines of "try manually SFTP'ing the data", despite explaining in the previous call/e-mail that we did that already). It's like ASM no longer recognises data uploads at all on this account. It remains unresolved (we had to create "test user1", "test user2", etc for the school to be able to temporarily use them while we try to get Apple to sort it - which doesn't make us look great!).

 

- This afternoon (on a relatively new account) we were getting "Failed to Verify your Identity" errors when entering a correct U/P (entering a different password generated the normal "incorrect password" error). This only happened with this one school. We could log into all other schools correctly. Eventually this error went away, except we now get to the 2-factor page, and it says too many 2-factor codes have been generated, and to try the last one we received (which doesn't work). We're now stuck in a loop of not being able to get the 2fa code, and being asked for the last one generated (even "send new code" does this).

 

- This seems to be a common one (judging by the number of posts on the internet), when using shared iPads we have to manually recreate all the users/teachers/classes/etc on the MDM, as it's not being pulled correctly from ASM (somewhat negating the whole point of ASM!).

 

- Trying to add a VPP account kept generating "This Apple ID cannot be invited", even if we created a brand new e-mail address on the domain (so it wasn't a clash with an existing Apple ID).

 

These are just from the top of my head (a head which has been banged on the table far too many times recently). I could probably list another 20 issues we've had in the past 6 months.

 

It's just awful. Just to add to the pain, whenever you call Apple Support (which I'm doing on a near daily basis at the moment) you have to go through following crazy conversation:

 

"Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about"

 

> "Apple school manager"

 

"You said 'monitor', is that correct?"

 

> "No"

 

"Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about"

 

> "Apple school manager"

 

"You said iPod Touch, is that correct?"

 

> "No"

 

(... and around and around we go for 10 minutes, until the automated voice thing realises it can't recognise "apple school manager")

 

Edited November 5, 2018 by Cazale

[NikChillin]

These devices are produced for individual use with the appropriate security in place, the only way these work for me is to have a single apple id for batches of devices and teaching ones linked to teacher email accounts. We use Meraki and it seems to be fine for the student ones. However, it will never be perfect as they are not designed for this purpose.

[Cazale]

These devices are produced for individual use with the appropriate security in place, the only way these work for me is to have a single apple id for batches of devices and teaching ones linked to teacher email accounts. We use Meraki and it seems to be fine for the student ones. However, it will never be perfect as they are not designed for this purpose.

 

That's pretty much how we used to set them up for our schools (load of devices on one ID with Meraki controlling them). I do think setting them up as supervised devices with ASM and an MDM (either shared or standalone) is the way forward. I just wish it worked better

[Brimstone]

Apple School Manager is, without question, the worst website/piece of software I've ever used and having wasted yet another full afternoon talking to support, I need to vent (forgive me).

 

We've recently spent a lot of our time installing iPads in various schools. Different configurations (some standalone, some shared). Even different MDMs. Something has gone wrong on every install, and every time it's stupid Apple School Manager.

 

Some recent examples of things that we have open (still open!) with Apple support:

 

- One school keeps getting username/password errors on the admin accounts (plural because after it happened the first time I added two more admin accounts). When this happens a couple of times, and I get through to support, they have me keep trying the different accounts and passwords, and they inevitably all get locked out. It then takes a full 2-3 weeks (!!!) to unlock the accounts. During the last support call he said "don't worry if you lock out this account too, we can reset it". I asked him if he was sure, because the other times it happened it took 2+ weeks to get the account unlocked. He confirmed he could definitely reset the account. The last account get's locked, he says "okay, now go to reset password". That doesn't work on admin accounts for ASM (I could have told him that if he'd explained fully!). 2-3 week wait for the accounts (plural) to get unlocked! Again! BTW, this happens completely randomly, and only on this one school. It will work with the u/p combination in a morning (cut and pasted from a secure password file), then in the afternoon it will just refuse to log in with the same account details. I've given up trying to get this fixed. It's been months.

 

- Another school we uploaded the SIMs database (using the Salamander tool). We got a couple of data errors that Salamander managed to solve for us, uploaded the data again and got "unknown server error" generated by Apple School Manager. Since getting that error the uploads have ceased to work. No logs are generated when we upload data (even manually SFTP'ing the data), and we no longer get the "updating data" dialogue. This has been logged multiple times (the responses are usually along the lines of "try manually SFTP'ing the data", despite explaining in the previous call/e-mail that we did that already). It's like ASM no longer recognises data uploads at all on this account. It remains unresolved (we had to create "test user1", "test user2", etc for the school to be able to temporarily use them while we try to get Apple to sort it - which doesn't make us look great!).

 

- This afternoon (on a relatively new account) we were getting "Failed to Verify your Identity" errors when entering a correct U/P (entering a different password generated the normal "incorrect password" error). This only happened with this one school. We could log into all other schools correctly. Eventually this error went away, except we now get to the 2-factor page, and it says too many 2-factor codes have been generated, and to try the last one we received (which doesn't work). We're now stuck in a loop of not being able to get the 2fa code, and being asked for the last one generated (even "send new code" does this).

 

- This seems to be a common one (judging by the number of posts on the internet), when using shared iPads we have to manually recreate all the users/teachers/classes/etc on the MDM, as it's not being pulled correctly from ASM (somewhat negating the whole point of ASM!).

 

- Trying to add a VPP account kept generating "This Apple ID cannot be invited", even if we created a brand new e-mail address on the domain (so it wasn't a clash with an existing Apple ID).

 

These are just from the top of my head (a head which has been banged on the table far too many times recently). I could probably list another 20 issues we've had in the past 6 months.

 

It's just awful. Just to add to the pain, whenever you call Apple Support (which I'm doing on a near daily basis at the moment) you have to go through following crazy conversation:

 

"Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about"

 

> "Apple school manager"

 

"You said 'monitor', is that correct?"

 

> "No"

 

"Tell us in a few words what Apple service you're calling about"

 

> "Apple school manager"

 

"You said iPod Touch, is that correct?"

 

> "No"

 

(... and around and around we go for 10 minutes, until the automated voice thing realises it can't recognise "apple school manager")

 

 

Whilst I’m not saying that Apple School Manager is really great and works all the time has anyone at Apple asked you the following questions...

 

Which web browser are you using to log into ASM? ( It does not support older browsers)

 

When you create a new user account with a Managed Apple ID that users account gets a temporary password which they are asked to change and create a new one? Are they doing this or keep using the temporary password first given to them as ASM will eventually lock them out?

 

Connecting ASM to your MIS is still not the greatest experience thanks mainly to Crapita not engaging with Apple to let them connect ASM to Simms. Have Salamander said anything about this..?

 

I’ve got 3 schools all using Shared iPad very successfully and without the problems you mention, one of these is now rolling out new 1:1 iPads. They all use Jamf Pro MDM which does Shared iPad seamlessly. Apple School Manager lets you create manual classes that sync to Jamf now as well.

 

When you create a user account in ASM, you give that user access rights to buy VPP content in ASM. Where you are “inviting” that user...? If you are using the invite for “VPP Facilitator accounts” these are only for legacy VPP accounts and should not be used for new VPP accounts?

 

Like I stated at the start ASM can have its issues, there was one today with 2 step which caused a few problems but this was resolved fairly quickly.

[RLR]

We've been using ASM for a couple of years now and just started shared iPad this year. We've had some issues but we've managed to get it working quite well. I've noticed the error logs are sometimes generated without any information. This is usually because there are extra columns in the CSV file or missing data. The CSV files have to be exactly right to work which can be a bit of pain due to so much data being needed.

 

I think the worst thing about Apple is the UK support. Takes 30 mins just to get through to Enterprise support.

[oapscarface]

Digging up an old thread, sorry.

 

In case anybody else stumbles across this thread in relation to the error 'Unknown Server Error', you can find what the error is by doing a little bit of digging in ASM, as of 2023 you can access the error by:

 

Logging into ASM

Clicking on your login name in the bottom left

Selecting Preferences

Clicking on Directory Sync

You should see in the right hand pain, SFTP Error

Click on Edit

This should show in RED what the error is

In our case it was Primary keys contain Dupe values