Apple Profile Manager - Help a novice out!

[lears]

Hi,

I'm part of a Multi-Academy Trust with several schools. I've managed to set up a Mac Mini Server with Profile Manager at a Secondary School and enrolled the iPads belonging to a local primary school. Whilst they were here they pulled down the correct configuration profile and apps.

The trouble is, now that the iPads have gone back to the Primary School, they don't receive any of the new apps i'm pushing from the server that is based at the Secondary School.

Our local council have configured a NAT address for our mac server so we are able to access it externally. They've confirmed all the ports are open for Apple Push Notifications.

 

There must be something i've not configured but i can't work out what! Please help!

[Sibrows]

Have you given the server a URL that's accessible from outside of the school and did you use that to enrol the iPads?

 

As a further piece of advice try and use something other than Profile Manager. We had no end of issues getting it to work reliably.

[DalekSec]

As a further piece of advice try and use something other than Profile Manager. We had no end of issues getting it to work reliably.

 

Agreed any MDM is better than that s***!

[Brimstone]

Agreed any MDM is better than that s***!

 

Ditto....Profile Manager is the last MDM you should be using to manage iPads in your own school let alone remotely in another school...

[Sibrows]

Agreed any MDM is better than that s***!

 

I was trying to be a little gentler but that's what I was thinking

 

As an example we had a MacMini dedicated to managing 20 iMacs after the forth time of rebuilding Profile Manager due to some unexplainable issues I gave up and invested in an MDM system. We're now managing our 100+ iMacs, 1,300 iPads via Jamf Pro.

[DrBeaker]

I was trying to be a little gentler but that's what I was thinking

 

As an example we had a MacMini dedicated to managing 20 iMacs after the forth time of rebuilding Profile Manager due to some unexplainable issues I gave up and invested in an MDM system. We're now managing our 100+ iMacs, 1,300 iPads via Jamf Pro.

 

But... I thought Macs, ixxxx devices etc just "worked"?

 

Also the two I'm hearing about are this Jamf or Mosyele. How do you find this Jamf stuff? Pros/Cons.

Edited March 13, 2019 by DrBeaker

[free780]

The big con with JAMF is the mandatory training when you first buy it. There is an annual subscription.

 

I also have profile manager. It seems fine for mac management if you don't need different user level settings. If one setting is incorrect the whole profile doesn't apply. You have to enable logging and go hunting for issues. E.G If you set a wallpaper but the file isn't present the whole profile including domain join fails.

The AD Sync falls over with large AD Groups and there isn't any documentation on how to adjust AD to accommodate macs.

[3s-gtech]

Really? I set my profile with a wallpaper that wasn’t there (I got the name wrong) and the rest of it worked. This is on El Capitan though - maybe newer OSs won’t?

[Sibrows]

But... I thought Macs, ixxxx devices etc just "worked"?

 

They do until you want to use them as non-personal devices

 

The big con with JAMF is the mandatory training when you first buy it. There is an annual subscription.

 

So I would agree to a point. The initial training is more like an on boarding process to ensure that you start off from the best foot and aren't left not knowing what's possible to lock down or not. To be clear we've only paid for the iOS 'Jump Start' (the initial training). For our iMacs we've outsourced it to our reseller to manage as I couldn't justify the significantly higher jump start cost the licenses didn't make any difference.

[ewanc1234]

Mosyle should served your needs well and its cheap too