[ipad] Apple Business Manager, A little help please

[AB_IT]

Hey Guys,

 

Been a while since I've used this. Basically in my school previously I'd use Apple Configurator 2. Login to the VPP store and purchase licenses for free or paid iPad apps then import these into apple configurator to manually setup all our iPads.

 

I think that has now become Apple Business Manager, but I'm unsure how this works or links in with Apple Configurator 2. Do I just purchase app licenses on there, sign into the same account on Configurator 2 that I use for ABM and add the apps I have bought licenses for to deploy them?

 

Sorry bit of a noob here, only want a simple free way to manage our iPads.

 

Thanks all!

[TwistedHelixis]

I am new (ish) to this also.

 

First, if you are a school you will want Apple School Manager, not business.

 

What I have done is migrate our iPads out from AC2 and into ASM. I can then add any apple apps via ASM and no longer need AC2.

[Dan2025]

Apple school manager for apps, you can also add your iPads. Either by contacting the company that sold you the iPads and getting their code (hope they add old devices for you) or by preping etc with configurator.I've recently added all our old devices to asm via config and now I could bin our mac server but just in case!

 

Though ASM won't manage the iPads, so you'll either need to still use configurator or look into getting an MDM. Jamf is the gold standard but quite pricey, I've also used Mosyle which does have a free version which can be worked around to meet need.

With the MDM, you get a nice overview of the devices, tools to command remotely & you can make amendments to the profile without touching the device.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Danwinchelsea

[AB_IT]

Thanks for the info both, I'm happy to stick with Configurator, used it before and is a lot better than the before days. I can see there is an option to add the iPads onto ABM when preparing the devices so I assume I do this (We're not a school but I used to work for a couple )

 

Does Apple Configurator need to be logged into an Admin AppleID that the ABM portal uses before I do this? It's currently logged into an account that's not been added onto ABM yet. Is that also how it knows how many licenses I have for apps to let me deploy them or does ABM just push these to the iPads via the cloud?