advice on ipad deployment for mixed 1-to- and shared environment

[TomDay]

Getting late in the summer and trying to get about 300 iPads ready for our lower school students. iPads will go in carts, most of the iPads will be in a 1-to-1 situation and the remaining ~50 will be shared. I've been pouring over information the last few weeks and am looking for some advice. I am using DEP and pre-stage enrollments to set the environment up on each, as well as deploying free apps via smart groups (install automatically/prompt user option). The part I am stuck on is with paid apps. With the past frustration of Apple Configurator, there is no interest in revisiting that. Trying to avoid Apple IDs for each young student or designated Apple IDs per device, I'm wondering how I can best be able to get the paid apps on the iPads and then be able to revoke them when needed to recover the license.

Thanks in advance for you thoughts and any recommendations.

[bumbletech]

Before iOS 9 comes out, I don't think you have a whole lot of (supported) options.

Take a look at AppleID for students. It's not the greatest right now, but any of your families that are remotely familiar with iOS are likely to have expectations about features such as Find My iPad and iCloud—especially if the devices are going home.

How are you getting the free apps on there without AppleIDs?

[Simmo]

Unfortunately by far the best option is having an apple id for every either A) user or B) ipad.

It goes against apple guidelines, but if you have enough licenses purchased you could have multiple devices signed in to one apple id and assign/revoke apps from that apple id as needed.

[wdpickle]

Check with your Apple rep about a "Kiosk Enrollment" for U13.
I had a discussion this afternoon with our Apple rep and we are going to set up a Kiosk enrollment for our students that are under 13 . The kiosk option is (supposedly) quicker for parents to enroll (without using an email address). They select their students name answer the 3 security questions and they are done. The enrollment can also be run on iPads according to our rep, during a parents night for example. We are supposed to be able to upload a CSV for current students and new students can be done on the fly with a "few" minutes of delay after a location admin enters the student info.
Only catch is you have to own FileMaker to convert the file Apple sends back. Our rep made it sound easy. We will find out in the next few weeks as we move forward. Our students come back the first of next week. So we will try and enroll our students in U13 on parent nights on iPads.
The kiosk can be set up on a machine with the DB or an iPad with an app. I asked if we are able to point the iPads back to a FileMaker DB on a "kiosk server". That was a new concept for our rep but he is going to check into it. Something to think about.

[TomDay]

@jbourdon Did I miss a feature in iOS 9 that I should be looking forward to that makes you mention iOS 9? Apple ID is on my list for today to check out, and as for free app deployment I am pushing via smart groups and then on the device using a shared Apple ID.

@wdpickle Thanks for info on Kiosk Enrollment, I''ll check it out

[wdpickle]

Rumor has it that "soon" we will be able to push app to a device, not just to an Apple ID.

[TomDay]

Thats a great rumor @wdpickle !

[bumbletech]

@TomDay @wdpickle , it's more than a rumor. They covered it at WWDC.

Here's a nice writeup with a link to Apple's WWDC session video:
http://www.enterpriseios.com/story/2015/06/12/WWDC_Whats_New_in_Managing_Apple_Devices_Quite_a_lot

Granted, playing around with the Configurator 2 beta, I thought you might be able to use your VPP account with configurator AND your MDM, but when I try to connect an account to the beta, it tells me it's going to remove the VPP account from any server you're using. A bit of a bummer, but if you don't have to use the AppleID as the middleman, hopefully deployments become more reliable.

[wdpickle]

Our Apple rep said its due out in AugSepOctember, or there abouts