Shared iPad with Apple School Manager and Meraki

[DeGrimmy]

Hi all,

 

I'm currently trying to grapple with getting a deployment of 60 iPads for our primary school to work the way we want it. The school would like them set up so that Year 1 and 2 students can pick up an iPad, find their name under their class on the iPad lock screen, tap it and type in a 4 digit passcode to open their session. However, I'm struggling with this - Shared iPad shows up to a certain number of users on the home screen, but the students have to log in with their Apple ID and password in order for their names to then appear. In other words, it's not pre-populated with the classes and students, and the school don't want to make things complicated for the students by giving them Apple IDs and passwords for first time sign-in.

 

To give you the rundown of what we've done so far:

 

- iPads all listed in ASM

- Accounts for all students created in ASM and assigned to their respective classes

- DEP and VPP sorted between ASM and Meraki

- Test iPad currently assigned to Meraki MDM with Shared iPad switched on.

- Settings profile created for iPads to restrict functionality, and set up to automatically deploy to any iOS device assigned to Meraki

 

In Meraki, there is an "Education Configuration" option for the settings profile to configure Apple Classroom, which can pull users and groups from ASM and (I hope) do what the school are asking for - However, I'm having issues with this added to the settings profile and I keep getting an error message when I try to push the profile to the iPad, so I haven't been able to test this properly. Regardless of this particular issue (a support ticket has been sent to Meraki), is this what I'm looking for?

 

Has anyone else managed their iPad deployment through ASM and Meraki for their school? How did you do it?

 

Thanks in advance!

Edited May 25, 2021 by DeGrimmy

[Brimstone]

Q1. How many users per iPad are you planning for (there are limits to this)

Q2. What spec of iPad 32GB, 128GB?

 

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mdm/mdm71124b400/web

Edited May 25, 2021 by Brimstone

[DeGrimmy]

Q1. How many users per iPad are you planning for (there are limits to this)

Q2. What spec of iPad 32GB, 128GB?

 

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mdm/mdm71124b400/web

Ah yes - I forgot that important detail.

 

1) I've set the limit for Shared iPad for 5 users per iPad, although realistically, it will be 2 students - One from each class in the year group.

 

2) They're 64GB iPad Minis (5th generation).

[Brimstone]

Ah yes - I forgot that important detail.

 

1) I've set the limit for Shared iPad for 5 users per iPad, although realistically, it will be 2 students - One from each class in the year group.

 

2) They're 64GB iPad Minis (5th generation).

 

Right we got that out of the way...all good to go

 

In Meraki, there is an "Education Configuration" option for the settings profile to configure Apple Classroom, which can pull users and groups from ASM and (I hope) do what the school are asking for - However, I'm having issues with this added to the settings profile and I keep getting an error message when I try to push the profile to the iPad, so I haven't been able to test this properly. Regardless of this particular issue (a support ticket has been sent to Meraki), is this what I'm looking for?

Yes this is what you need set up so students can see their name in each class, then tap on the name and sign in with a passcode. If you take a look at one of the shared iPads in Meraki has it confirmed installation of the EDU Profile?

 

P.S. A major critical part of using Shared iPad is a caching server, without one this will fail.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Brimstone

[DeGrimmy]

Right we got that out of the way...all good to go

Yes this is what you need set up so students can see their name in each class, then tap on the name and sign in with a passcode. If you take a look at one of the shared iPads in Meraki has it confirmed installation of the EDU Profile?

 

Great, thanks. Unfortunately I'm running into this separate issue with Meraki where, once I activate the Education Configuration in the Settings Profile, Meraki fails to sync the profile changes to the test iPad. I'm trying to get that sorted out with Meraki support at the moment.

 

P.S. A major critical part of using Shared iPad is a caching server, without one this will fail.

 

That's a scuppering detail... Thanks for highlighting this. I'll go back to the school with this info.