dsiefers

I actually just got off the phone with Apple about migrating to ASM. We have a 2013 VPP account, so we have to go through the ASM enrollment process. I was hoping to finish rolling out our new iPads and spend down our VPP credits before making the change to ASM, but we're just not going to have enough time. Might as well make the switch and see if it changes anything. On Tuesday I asked the support rep about whether the migration to Apple School Manager would help us with this issue, and he said it would not. But it's worth a shot since I seem to have run out of options with our current configuration. Once we get migrated, if we are still having problems I'll give the steps at the link a try. Thanks!

I went through Volume Purchasing Assignments in Apple Configurator and compared it to my purchasing records. It turns out that not displaying the correct number of copies available and assigned serial numbers is not exclusive to free apps. I have some apps that we paid for and were never free that have this problem. I see I'm going to have a problem when I go to replace our iPad minis with full size iPads and I can't move some of the apps we paid for from the minis to the full size iPads.

1. The iPads do not have an Apple ID. I assign the apps through Apple Configurator only. 2. They are apps and not books. The biggest problem I have is an app called Teach Your Monster to Read, as we paid actual money for it ($4.99 a license). It was expensive, as apps go. There are other apps with the same problem, though. 3. I don't use Blueprints. When I login to the VPP account in a browser, the purchase history shows that we bought 10 copies of Teach Your Monster to Read, and later bought another 10 copies. Is there another place in VPP besides purchase history that would display this information? The apple support rep agreed with had 20 licenses altogether. I notice that this happens more with free apps. I need to go through the list to see if the problem is exclusive to apps that are or were free at one time. In the case of Teach Your Monster to Read, it used to be free. We purchased the first 10 licenses when it was free, and bought another 10 after it became a paid app.

Has anyone else run into problems uninstalling apps in Configurator 2.11.1? I'm finding that when I remove an app, Configurator gets hung on ACUAcquireServiceAssertionOperation, and although the app gets uninstalled from the iPad, the license does not get revoked. I've talked to Apple support and reported this as a bug. It's possible to manually revoke the licenses, except when we run into the next bug... At the same time some of our apps are not showing that they are installed in the Volume Purchasing Assignments window. They are listed there, but they say things like "20 of 20 available" even when I know that 10 of the licenses are installed. There is also no triangle next to these apps, so you can't expand a list of installed serial numbers. This is preventing us from manually revoking the licenses for these apps, either. Apple support is also aware of this problem, and they said that this issue has been around for a while now. I got the impression there's no intention of fixing it. The combination results in some apps being permanently licensed to whichever iPad they are now installed on. This failure to revoke the license when removing the app just started with the upgrade to Configurator 2.11.1. I'm using a late 2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina 10.15.1. Interestingly, we also have a brand new MacBook Air, also with Catalina 10.15.1, and when I installed Apple Configurator 2.11.1 and created a new facilitator account just to play around with, I didn't have this problem adding and removing apps. I did my tests on a couple of new iPads that had never been supervised by the MacBook Pro. I could even install and remove the same apps that are giving us difficulty on the MacBook Pro. I'm not sure if the secret to the MacBook Air's success is the fact that it is a different machine, or that it was using a different facilitator account. If I knew for sure it was the machine that was the solution, I would migrate our Configurator setup to the new MacBook Air. But I don't want to do that only to find out that the issue is actually with the original facilitator account that we've been using for our iPads all this time, and the problem is just going to follow me to the MacBook Air. Any insight or similar experiences? I've been working with Configurator since 2013, and this is the first time I've been completely sunk. I actually called Jamf for a quote because I'm so done with this mess.

We've been continuing to use these settings, and the biggest problem we've run into is that it blocks http://www.google.com/cloudprint as well. So if a student doesn't already have our cloud printer added to their Chromebook (they already should, but apparently some kids missed Add Your Printer Day or something) they can't use the cloudprint page when they follow our link to add the printer. I'm getting around this by unblocking for only that student long enough to get the printer added, and then turning the blocking back on for them.

I've spent some more time refining this - currently in the Admin console I am blocking Javascript on Google, which seems to be taking care of doodles, logos, and any games that could come up on the main page. At the same time, I've specifically told it to Allow JavaScript on drive.google.com, classroom.google.com, etc, just in case, so our legit use of Google Apps doesn't get caught up in it. I say that it seems to be taking care of it, because you never know...it sometimes takes a bit of real world testing to find out if a block is truly functional or not. My testing seems to be showing you can pull up the games but no longer play them, anyway. The kids have more time to spend trying to make it work than I do. At the web filter I also blocked elgoog.im and a domain on github.io that was mirroring some of these games.

We have Chromebooks, and I've blocked Google Doodle games by using the same setting, only in the Google Admin console for our student domain. So far it looks like it is working.

Sounds promising, I'll give that a shot. Thanks!

That's what I figured, but I thought I would check before I declared it a loss. The iPad is used by a little kids, so the apps they are using (math facts games, that sort of thing) don't need an Internet connection beyond that initial connection during the first launch. I was hoping to salvage some use out of this iPad as I've been told that there's no budget to repair it.

I have a classroom iPad that seems to have a hardware problem that is preventing Wifi from working. The Wifi switch in Settings is greyed out and does not respond. I've tried various solutions online, including a Restore to factory settings using Apple Configurator, and it appears the conclusion to reach at this point is that there is some kind of hardware failure causing the wifi antenna to no longer work. The students don't really need a Wifi connection though. the only thing I need the Wifi connection for is to connect to the Internet the first time each app that was installed by Apple Configurator is launched. Without the Wifi connection, the first time you launch an app that was installed by Apple Configurator, you get the following message: Unable to Verify App A connection to the App Store is required for the first launch of "name of app" on this iPad. Please connect to the Internet and try again. Has anyone ever had any luck getting around this initial launch message without having to provide an Internet connection? If I could just get the apps launched once, the kids would be good to go. I've seen a couple of other postings online where people had this same dilemma, particularly where they were delivering the iPads to a classroom that did not have Internet. I think their eventual solution was that they just had to open all the apps once before delivering the iPads to the classroom with no Internet.

I'm seeing this issue as well with our new iPad minis, fresh out of the box, when trying to Prepare them for the first time in Apple Configurator. Most of the time the Prepare works, but randomly I will have one that gets stuck on installing iOS with 4 minutes remaining (what is it with the 4 minutes??). So far I've been lucky and if I do a force quit on Apple Configurator, reopen it and try to Prepare the errant iPad again, it goes through the second time without a problem.