Faculty iPad swap and handling data transfer

No Answer to this post but I'm going to post to it so I get the replies if nothing else. In the past, in the past our department has declared that it is the end-users responsibility to back up data in whatever form they choose . We just assign the new device and assist with new user set up if help is requested. This is an example of one of our policies that I don't like...mainly because I believe that we are helping the end-user effectively with it. I'm willing to listen to what other school districts are doing because we are likely to replace about as many teacher iPads the summer.

We don't really have a "policy" in place, but we're committed to helping to the best of our power / knowledge. My only concern / interest is how people are building a workflow to accommodate said situation when utilizing jss management.

If I don't get any response I will have to experiment and do as I said.... unmanage, perform the restore and then re-manage

I'm with you...I think because old and new device are DEP managed you might be able to work with iCloud backups but every time I've tried in the past has involved heartache on the end user. That is why I took my techs out of the equation with a policy. If you get a response or a good workflow please share.

I kicked this question around with my JAMF buddy last year. He pointed me to an apple suppor article (which the link no longer works) but his direct words are as follows "What I am gathering from this article is that we can't restore the backup from the same device the backup was grabbed from. So we can try to enroll an iPad as new into DEP and then restore a backup that wasn't grabbed from this sam iPad"

So from what I gather, the faculty can do a backup of their iPad, hand you the old one, you can then hand them the new one and when they sign in, they can choose to a restore. You can't do a restore on the same device, but a different device already managed should be no problem.

Thanks for the reply, Chris.

In my case I don't do a hand-off of an unwrapped / Zero-touch device. With that being said, I think in my case (untested as of yet) I will have to unmanage, do the restore (backed up from a different device) and then remanage.

I will try this and whatever I can before I contact my jamf Buddy..... you know, read the directions last! haha

I will post back when I have something worth while.

I believe in the past when we did swaps like this using the restore backup option unmanaged the devices, even if they were logged in and set up with DEP. We have Google Education accounts now so we started having everyone backup all their app information and files to Google Drive and then restoring per app or downloading the Drive app itself. This should work similarly with iCloud as well if anyone uses that for their cloud storage. I'll be interested if Apple or JAMF is able to tell us how to restore backups without losing management.

BTW, none of the Faculty have approached me on this yet to test a couple methods, so that is why I have NOT posted back.

In the past I have used iCloud backup to transfer from one managed iPad to another without issue. No need to unmanage the old iPad prior to backup.

I am in a non-DEP/non-School Manager environment. We do not provide Apple IDs for staff - some choose to pay for larger amounts of storage, bypassing the need for us to be as involved in backups and restores. If there are circumstances where migrating data via iCloud or exporting data out isn't possible or feasible, we take a backup of the old device with Configurator 2.

Restore workflow in configurator 2 is:
- Upgrade os
- Restore user backup
- Install trust profiles, etc and supervise
- Add add management profile, additional personalization, configuration, etc

If encrypted backups are on, you will need to know the password, or have a user provide the password if they were the ones that enabled encrypted backups, at the time the backup is restored.

Using the shared management token from the JSS, it's easy to have the necessary stuff on a given technician's machine to work with the user to backup the device and move config over 'in the field.' This moves 'config' (read - user data and settings) over. Apps must be reinstalled by policy/device assignment or Apple ID re-download.

If users have the data they need in iCloud, this avoids having to do a manual backup/restore like above. Most of our users do not pay for the extra storage. I have not personally worked with someone that had done backups of their own via iTunes or the like.