Hi, that's not ideal but sounds like a valid and interesting workaround. If the iPad is updated to iPadOS 17 you are able to wipe it without user interaction so only the first wipe / configuration (and update process) requires user interaction.

I can confirm that on our personal iPads no problems occured.

@SimonGGS I think you are right.  I have seen indications that even clearing the user data still has some Shared iPads fail.  I agree handing this over to users is just asking for trouble.  I could push out a profile to delay adoption of iPadOS 17.  Over the summer I was able to single-handedly re-provision 2500 iPads by myself.  But that took 2 months and my back was killing me by the end due to lugging around a few Bretford Sync Stations.  I'd rather not repeat that again, but it looks like I may have to, with some help probably this time.

@rob_sieljes I had thought of this, but that's adding a lot more complexity and at least 2 wipes.  I'm not sure I even trust our users to plug in devices, let alone perform a restore.

Oh Apple, I love you, but why do you have to make my life so hard this time!!!!

Hi,

It is horrible that we need to bother with this and Apple is just ignoring the issue - as far as I can tell. 

Especially if Apple wants to focus on business deployments with their devices they cannot request from their users, companies and education facilities to reset all iPads once a year because their software contains bugs.

I hope you find a better solution that this with a bit more time and I think you may have more influence on Apple than I had. 

For my part I just reset all the iPads we had which took me 2-3 days and now everything is working fine again. Let's hope this will last a bit.

@SimonGGS At this point I'm leaning towards pushing out a deferred update restriction, but that can only be enabled for up to 90 days.  That will buy us some time.  Then systematically going school to school and restoring all Shared iPads.  This wasn't too bad during the summer because there was little to no network usage but with schools in use this may take longer.  We have 55 schools to work thru.  Some schools can be done in 1/2 day, others take a bit longer than a day.  So under ideal conditions by myself it would take two months to work through all schools.  Ideal doesn't happen so I wasn't able to get through all schools this summer, but if I hadn't taken vacation it might have been possible.

But that can't be a solution that we all have to reset the iPads manually... and then IOS18 then the same game again?

Es muss eine andere Lösung geben. Wenn wenigstens die iPads danach mit Jamf kommunizieren würden, könnte man ein Registrierungsprofil abgeben und sie können sich dann selbst wieder ins WLAN einwählen und es in ein geteiltes iPad umwandeln. Aber das ist leider nicht möglich.

Hat schon einmal jemand versucht, ein iPad komplett zurückzusetzen und dann iOS 17 hochzufahren? Bleiben sie bei der Installation hängen?

But that can't be a solution that we all have to reset the iPads manually... and then IOS18 then the same game again?

There has to be another solution. If at least the iPads would communicate with Jamf afterwards, you could hand over a registration profile and then they can dial back into the WLAN themselves and convert it to a shared iPad.. but unfortunately that's not possible.

Has anyone ever tried completely resetting an iPad and then booting up iOS 17? Do they get stuck in the installation process?

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@MarioStoehr wrote:

Has anyone ever tried completely resetting an iPad and then booting up iOS 17? Do they get stuck in the installation process?

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I'm not sure I follow this.  What do you mean?

Remotely reset a shared iPad using an enrollment profile. It resets itself completely, automatically dials into Wi-Fi and converts into a shared iPad. This means that no one has ever been logged in as a user on the iPad. And then in Jamf say update to IOS17.

I have never completely reset an iPad before an update process. So far I have only tried clearing cache and removing classes.

Maybe it will work if you completely reset the iPad first...

@MarioStoehr That may be valid but I don't know if I trust most of our users with that.  The workflow is valid though and it "should" work.  Maybe something to use in conjunction with my team's help.

No, Shared iPads can reset themselves but after reset a user has to confirm the enrollment and select a language and region for these devices. One new feature of iPadOS 17 is taht one can issue a reset via MDM which includes an auto reenrollment feature. Only then the iPad skips the region, language selection and dials automatically back into Jamf. 

But this won't work for these iPads that are running on iPadOS 16. 

And unfortunately the Return to service option is only available for a single device. You cannot do this in bulk (yet, as I was told by Jamf)

@EdwardB Oooo!  I missed that option.  I like it.

https://learn.jamf.com/bundle/technical-articles/page/Return_to_Service.html

https://learn.jamf.com/bundle/jamf-school-documentation/page/Return_Device_to_Service.html

That's right, unfortunately this isn't possible as a mass operation yet. But I would like to know whether IOS17 will work with this variant.

If so, Jamf could certainly program in this mass operation fairly easily.

Users don't have to do anything, shared iPad does everything on its own. I've already tried it.. pretty cool feature.

I'm getting a few iPads next Friday, so I'll try that out.

So I have now tested the following:

(1) shared iPad with IOS 16.6 reset via Jamf
(2) Since the "Network configuration profile" function for automatic connection to the WLAN is unfortunately only available with IOS 17, I had to briefly click through this iPad by hand
(3) I pushed the update to IOS17.2 in Jamf
(4) iPad updated itself, had a black background, but was on WiFi and now it comes on.. it communicated with Jamf!!!!
(5) I let it automatically dial into the WLAN using the "Network Configuration Profile" function and it converted itself into a shared iPad.

Great - unfortunately it doesn't help any of us, as the necessary function is only available from IOS17 and mass action is still not possible. You would have to reset each iPad individually.

But if there are problems from IOS17 to IOS18 again, you could go this route and reset the iPad cleanly before you start the update.

What I haven't yet tested, however, is whether it would have been able to connect to the WLAN in the normal way with a remote update to IOS 17.2, without me having to reset it cleanly first and therefore no one was ever logged in. This approach definitely didn't work with IOS 17.1.2. Maybe with IOS17.2 at least communication with Jamf won't be lost.

Has someone already tried this?

Update to IOS 17.2 still doesn't work remotely.. the iPad no longer communicates with Jamf.