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Releasing devices through Jamf instead of Apple School Manager?

  • April 22, 2022
  • 4 replies
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whiteb
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I was just wondering if it was possible to release devices in Jamf Pro instead of doing it through Apple School Manager?

I don't see a way to do bulk releases in Apple School Manager.

I noticed under the connection to Jamf in ASM (Settings > MDM Server Info) - we have 'Allow this MDM Server to release devices.' checked.

Just wanted to see if there was a way of bulk-releasing devices in Jamf. Otherwise I will do them one-by-one in Apple School Manager.

Best answer by wkelly1

Whenever I am trying to release devices in bulk, I have a spreadsheet of devices and just select all the serials, copy, and then paste into ASM. I don't believe I have ever run into an issue doing this and formatting doesn't seem to matter a whole lot.

    4 replies

    W
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    • wkelly1
    • New Contributor
    • Answer
    • April 22, 2022

    Whenever I am trying to release devices in bulk, I have a spreadsheet of devices and just select all the serials, copy, and then paste into ASM. I don't believe I have ever run into an issue doing this and formatting doesn't seem to matter a whole lot.

    Slicer
    whiteb
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    • whiteb
    • Author
    • Valued Contributor
    • April 22, 2022

    Whenever I am trying to release devices in bulk, I have a spreadsheet of devices and just select all the serials, copy, and then paste into ASM. I don't believe I have ever run into an issue doing this and formatting doesn't seem to matter a whole lot.


    Yep, I ended up finding this to be the case. I got a little discouraged from seeing people say they removed the ability to upload by .csv, but the copy and pasting of serial numbers directly into the ASM search works great like you said, even adds the commas for you. Found you can do the same thing in Jamf, just doesn't work there without commas. 

    rob1
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    • rob1
    • Contributor
    • March 8, 2023

    "Make sure that you reset these devices back to defaults via Jamf before releasing else you will only have the option of manual release via Apple Configurator 2 or iTunes."

    The best way to bulk release devices is via Apple School Manager, you can paste comma separated serial numbers in the search (up to 1024 items) and perform management changes and releases on them.

    Starting in JAMF, you need to export a CSV of all the devices that you would like to release:

    • Create a device group of those that you would like to release, use a smart group rather than a static group as you can base the devices to be released based on characteristics of the device such as age or user group membership. 
    • Go to your device selection page, I use Jamf School so that is located under Devices>Devices on the Menu, adjust for your Jamf product accordingly. Click the Filter button and Select "Member Of" drop down list and select the device group that you created and then select Export, tick the columns that you would like to export to CSV and then click Export.
    • Open the file in Numbers, select all the serial numbers from the device list (bearing in mind that you have a limit of 1024 items) and copy to the clipboard. Open a web browser and log on to school.apple.com with your apple administrator account with appropriate permissions for device release. Select Devices menu and then paste the copied serial numbers into the search bar, select the first device, hold down shift and scroll to the last device in the list and select that device. The window on the right should tell you the number of devices selected, click release from organisation.
    • Go back to Jamf and make sure to place the released devices into trash so that they are no longer counted towards your device license count.

     

    J
    J
    Forum|alt.badge.img+5

    "Make sure that you reset these devices back to defaults via Jamf before releasing else you will only have the option of manual release via Apple Configurator 2 or iTunes."

    The best way to bulk release devices is via Apple School Manager, you can paste comma separated serial numbers in the search (up to 1024 items) and perform management changes and releases on them.

    Starting in JAMF, you need to export a CSV of all the devices that you would like to release:

    • Create a device group of those that you would like to release, use a smart group rather than a static group as you can base the devices to be released based on characteristics of the device such as age or user group membership. 
    • Go to your device selection page, I use Jamf School so that is located under Devices>Devices on the Menu, adjust for your Jamf product accordingly. Click the Filter button and Select "Member Of" drop down list and select the device group that you created and then select Export, tick the columns that you would like to export to CSV and then click Export.
    • Open the file in Numbers, select all the serial numbers from the device list (bearing in mind that you have a limit of 1024 items) and copy to the clipboard. Open a web browser and log on to school.apple.com with your apple administrator account with appropriate permissions for device release. Select Devices menu and then paste the copied serial numbers into the search bar, select the first device, hold down shift and scroll to the last device in the list and select that device. The window on the right should tell you the number of devices selected, click release from organisation.
    • Go back to Jamf and make sure to place the released devices into trash so that they are no longer counted towards your device license count.

     


    TIL I can batch-release devices in ASM. This is huge. I picked two random serials to test and pasted just like "serial1 serial2" and they both came up for me to select/highlight and then I saw the option to release.

    Thanks for the thorough write-up!

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