Managed Apple ID and Books

Books unfortunately are not device assignable paid or free. So the user has to have an accepted VPP invitation and the book has to be assigned under VPP assignments to that user from that VPP account.

For us it has been hit or miss on the assignment part with managed Apple IDs. I have the option set to "Automatically register only users with managed Apple IDs and skip invitation". But it seems like half of them never automatically register, so I have to go to the user and hit the "Redo VPP Registration" button. Then it works fine and the book just shows up in iBooks.

Do the following:

Make sure the App Store is available for the student on the iPad. Sign into the App Store using the Managed Apple ID.

In JAMF > Users > VPP Assignments, create a new assignment and make sure all the VPP books you acquired are checked. Either create a Smart Group or add all the iPads in the Scope for the New Assignment.

In JAMF > Users > VPP Invitations, create a new Invitation and set Distribution method to "Prompt users to accept/make available in Self Service". Set the Scope to the Smart Group which has the students in it.

Now when you launch Self Service on one of the iPads, you will be asked to Register. You should get a confirmation that it happened. It may take a minute or 2, but when you open iBooks, all the books will be inside with "cloud" icons for each student. They can tap the cloud to download the book.

At this point, you can remove the App Store if you do not want the kids to have access to the App Store.

@bvondeylen

This worked for us! Thanks for sharing your detailed steps!

If you have managed Apple IDs, you shouldn't need to make the App Store available, as that actually defeats the purpose. In the VPP invitation you should select Automatically register only users with Managed Apple IDs and skip invitation as your distribution method, and then check the box below that says basically the same thing. Once you've verified that they're signed in correctly in the iTunes and App Store section of Settings, send out the invite and it should assign the content to that user, and the book should appear in iBooks.

@thejenbot I am having one heck of a time with this. I have all my ducks in a row and just did what you suggested in the VPP invitation and then resent the invitation out again. How long does this take? I am testing this with a student but not having any luck. Would you mind discussing this over email? I would certainly appreciate it. hottingert@hoban.org

Thanks.

Resending the invitation will suck another license. If the user is signed in to iTunes & App Store with the MAID, you have the book assigned, and you send the invite it should take a minute or so. At least it did last year at this time; I am pushing out more tomorrow using this same method and hopefully all goes well. Regardless I will follow up with you via email :)

Having difficulty with this as well. We do not give access to the App Store and some register fine while others do not. Those that do not work have the vpp invite in self service but cant do anything with it without access to App Store. Those that registered successfully had the invite pop up and disappear right away. The only way I have gotten this to work for those with problems is to open the app store and accept the invite..

We don't allow the app store for most grade levels either. See my post above from 1.24.18 - this is still working for us successfully...

Thanks @thejenbot we tried that to no avail... still prompts them

I was not getting too far with mine until I looked at how ASM assigns the managed Apple ID in Jamf. I changed the associations a bit from contains to starts with and my results improved dramatically. I am still far away from @thejenbot results but I am seeing some success.

@thejenbot I can get this to work but if the books aren't downloaded immediately, or we try to add new books, the Managed Apple ID needs to be entered again which then fires off 2FA request. Any way around this?

If you have managed Apple IDs, you shouldn't need to make the App Store available, as that actually defeats the purpose. In the VPP invitation you should select Automatically register only users with Managed Apple IDs and skip invitation as your distribution method, and then check the box below that says basically the same thing. Once you've verified that they're signed in correctly in the iTunes and App Store section of Settings, send out the invite and it should assign the content to that user, and the book should appear in iBooks.

@thejenbot This is an old thread, but your post above seems to indicate you successfully used automatic acceptenace of VPP invites. It won't work for us. A colleague in my department contacted JAMF support and was told it only works if the user accounts are created in JAMF by being synced with Apple School Manager. Is that the case for your users?

I found no reference to that in any JAMF documentation that discussed VPP nor have I yet to find any reference to that on JAMFnation (not that I read every article) so I'm a little skeptical of that answer from support.

In our system, users account are created when a user registers a device by logging in using network credentials (via LDAP authentication). Therefore, our user accounts are not created by syncing with Apple School Manager.

Having this problem now.. We use federated login. ASM users are sync'd with Jamf Pro. We use automatic registration.

All that being said, last year, using the same setup, I was able to acquire books inside Apps & Books in ASM. Then I went into Jamf and created a Volume Assignment, and scoped it to All Users. At that time, it worked, all users were able to see and install the books.

We are getting ready for a training session next week and someone mentioned to me TODAY that the books are not working. We have been using Books for almost a year now just fine with the current setup. Now all of a sudden nothing works. They can't press "GET" on the books, as it is greyed out and not able to be tapped.

Every other assignment works, for Apps and such, but just not Books. Also, when we open the Books app it says "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again."... I don't get it. I am lost, Jamf support is lost after being on the phone for around 2-3 hours with them.

Now escalated to Tier 3 support...

Update to my last reply... Apple Engineer has told me it seems like a problem with the Books app itself, which is what I suspected.. because Books is the only app that will not automatically log users in.. It is a problem with the restriction for "modify account settings" In Jamf.. when that restriction is enabled, volume assigned eBooks will not show up.  When you disable it, you are allowed to manually login to the Books app with your Managed Apple ID, and then the assigned eBooks show up in the Library as intended.  I am being told by Apple enterprise support that I have to use the work around for now, by removing the restriction on "modify account settings" in Jamf, and Apple has said they are forwarding this information to their Product Engineering team.