Apple School Manager or Not ?

[discoveranother]

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this is the correct thread for this but here goes.

 

Have a primary school that is able to get some Ipads from the Department for Education. The Dfe are asking for an Apple School Manager ID in order to enrol the Ipads onto the Apple Device Enrolment Progarm automatically. However, the school do not use Apple School Manager.

 

To be honest, we aren't familiar with Apple School Manager and I'm aware Apple School Manager needs to work with an MDM solution but as we only attend the school once a fortnight that this is something the school would have to likely manage themselves if they opted for Apple School Manager. Any feedback welcome on this.

 

Also, does it require much setup, is it worth having or does it really depend on the amount of Ipads they have ?

 

Any feedback most welcome.

 

Thanks all

[RLR]

I would go down the Apple School Manager route and get an MDM. Otherwise, in the future you will probably have devices locked to a personal iCloud account that you can no longer use. Also, if you're installing apps across multiple devices then you're probably breaking some app licensing rules. I agree this might mean someone in the primary school might need to manage this but I think if you can get them setup then there shouldn't be much else needed to do done.

 

An MDM will also allow you to setup shared iPads that allow each student to login to them with their own managed apple ID account. If you don't use shared mode then there's a good chance students or staff will leave themselves logged into apps or emails and this can lead to data breaches.

Edited March 16, 2022 by RLR

[JOrdan01070]

I would get apple school manager setup and sign up for Mosyle, it makes managing the devices a lot easier, once setup very easy to manage.

[seaweed]

Setting up Apple School Manager isn't really that hard and you definitely would want your iPads to be managed by a MDM. It makes things so much easier. Just fill your school's details on Apple School Manager and they'll call you to verify your school. If you need an MDM I'd recommend Mosyle which is free and easy to use. You can customize settings, home screen layout, manage apps etc. Once set up, enrolling and managing them would be so much easier. If you set the profile to prevent students from changing passwords, downloading apps and deleting apps, you can probably just leave them as they are and won't need to deal with them afterwards.

[discoveranother]

Thanks for the replies.

 

The school currently have Meraki access points so there is a Meraki MDM portal. If I will be totally honest. Naturally I want to help the school as much as I can and hopefully they can find a streamlined way of managing Ipads. My only concern is time. I'm not going to lie, i'm concerned that I will start getting asked to set all this up in Apple School Manager when they should assign a member of staff to manage it. I'm only at the school for 2 hours a fortnight and always busy for the full 2 hours and that is what i'm paid for, so i'm a bit concerned there maybe work with this.

 

Sorry if I sound unhelpful, but it maybe that it's not that difficult at all. It's all about time and who manages it. However, the thing is, they will need training on this, so I will have to find out if the Dfe provide training to them.

[TwistedHelixis]

I look after a number of primary schools. Once everything is setup with ASM and Mosyle it's basically fire and forget. If an iPad then ever needs resetting up, its just a case of clicking reset in Mosyle and that's basically it. You don't even need to be onsite do do this.

 

If you get the iPads and they are not already enrolled in ASM, its a real pain to then add them later.

 

I assume you could even have them in ASM but not use any MDM if that's what you wanted.

[mavhc]

Ask if they want to spend time making it work correctly up front, or waste time later manually managing ipads.

 

Another advantage of using School Manager and MDM is no one can reset them after they've been nicked, if you reset them they come back up with the school name on the lock screen.

 

a) sign up, phone call from Apple to authenticate you're really at the school, b) add a backup admin user, c) sign up to free mdm, I use ManageEngine, but they're mostly all the same wrt Apple stuff, d) ipads should appear in ASM, you then assign them to the MDM you've picked. e) in the MDM you set wifi passwords, lockdown restrictions

 

To add a free app: a) go to ASM and "buy" 1000 copies, b) to do MDM and sync with ASM, c) deploy apps to groups of ipads. Paid app is the same but first you have to spend ages trying to give Apple money.

 

If you have time ask them to pay you for a whole day to set it up. Waiting for Apple to phone you takes a while though, so do that earlier.

[discoveranother]

Ask if they want to spend time making it work correctly up front, or waste time later manually managing ipads.

 

Another advantage of using School Manager and MDM is no one can reset them after they've been nicked, if you reset them they come back up with the school name on the lock screen.

 

a) sign up, phone call from Apple to authenticate you're really at the school, b) add a backup admin user, c) sign up to free mdm, I use ManageEngine, but they're mostly all the same wrt Apple stuff, d) ipads should appear in ASM, you then assign them to the MDM you've picked. e) in the MDM you set wifi passwords, lockdown restrictions

 

To add a free app: a) go to ASM and "buy" 1000 copies, b) to do MDM and sync with ASM, c) deploy apps to groups of ipads. Paid app is the same but first you have to spend ages trying to give Apple money.

 

If you have time ask them to pay you for a whole day to set it up. Waiting for Apple to phone you takes a while though, so do that earlier.

 

Thank you for all the replies.

 

Yes I did wonder that the school will either have to pay me to spend a day or so setting them up. As you correctly say, trying to get through to Apple can be quite cumbersome.

[TwistedHelixis]

trying to get through to Apple can be quite cumbersome.

I recently set this up at a school. When I set it up it wanted the school phone number. After a few days Apple called the school.

[Norphy]

Don’t you need Apple School/Business Manager if you want to buy apps in bulk? I’m pretty sure you also need it if you want to use whatever Apple is calling DEP these days as well.