App push for iPad

[pcrmc]

Hello JAMF nation,

I work in IT for a medical center and we have recently started deploying iPads out in our environment.

I want to get some feedback on how others are handling application deployments via the app store. As we all know, Apple requires a password for app store apps regardless if it is pushed or not. How do you handle this?

Do you assign a itunes account to every user that gets an iPad? Require them to get an itunes account? Or do you have a central account that everyone knows the password for?

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[CasperSally]

We only push apps we can buy through VPP.

You can go through the trouble of creating a non credit card iTunes account, and tying it to a generic email address tied to the users real email address if your exchange admins can work with you.

This way if user leaves, you can tie the generic email address to the new user.

It depends how many apps/users you have. The whole create an account/iTunes account for every user is a pain to maintain. And the kicker is when a user redeems an app, there's no way to force them to use the account they set up. It's very easy for them to accidentally (or not) use their personal account and now they own the app.

For these reasons, some iOS users consider apps discretionary like a paper and pencil, and just give users code and consider the app is theirs and if they leave, they have to rebuy it for new hire.

It's probably some sort of cost benefit analysis you need to run. We do a combo of both.

[jalatman]

You can side load apps with Configurator to new builds, but I would probably go with the VPP route for paid apps. For both free and paid apps you could scope the apps to systems and they would get prompted to plugin their iTunes credentials. This is good in that they can update the apps themselves and bad in that they have ultimate control decline installing them. By going through the mdm rather than side loading, you have the ability to automatically remove the app should they become unmanaged from Casper. Does not stop however the app from being backed up and restored to another device (though you can disable backups if you are managing the system they are using to sync as well as disable iCloud backups if you are that concerned)

I agree with Sally about the confusion of using multiple iTunes accounts. I would suggest having the users create an iTunes account based on your organizations email address. This will make the vpp codes easier too. I also agree about the cost benefit analysis. The cost of the apps at the moment are relatively inexpensive (though should an microsoft release office that might change) and can be considered expendable to some extent.