Apple Classroom - Anyone got it to work yet?

[jgwatson]

We are trying to set up Apple Classroom and we can't get it to work correctly. We are seeing even though we have added a full class, only one or two students show up. Iv'e checked that all student's are supervised and are running 9.3.1

We are using statically assigned groups - if that makes a difference.

Also do the class times need to be added? (I have, but we have a crazy schedule where this feature will be a pain to configure.)

Anyone have any luck?

[Nils]

I tested Classroom with one teacher an two students, works fine for me.

Meeting times are just for Casper Focus, here is an overview:
http://docs.jamfsoftware.com/9.9/casper-suite/administrator-guide/Classes.html

Static groups should be no problem.
If you are not using shared iPad, the student iPads must also be assigned to a user in JSS.
And it is very important, that the EDU Profile is pushed to the devices.

Are your iPads not visible in classroom, or are they just "offline"?

[notoole]

Bluetooth must be enabled as well. Also, the devices must be connected to the same WiFi network as the instructor iPad.

[wdpickle]

We have it running. iOS 9.3.1 JSS 9.9, student name assigned to the class blue tooth on. On our Aruba controller we had to add classroom.app to the allowed list of services (on Aruba. Configuration -> Air Group -> Services ->_classroom._tcp ~enabled). We had to manually add it

[hottingert]

We are giving it a good test this week. Our classes were imported from PowerSchool. I had to make me a user in the JSS in order to become a teacher. I enrolled two teacher iPads and mine and made sure that they were assigned properly to the teachers and myself. Students updated their iPads for us. Bluetooth was turned on.

One issue we had was that several students had updated to 9.3.1 but after their device had already inventoried in the JSS. So an update inventory took care of that and then the students were not offline anymore in the Classroom App.

One teacher is looking specifically at battery life. She had an iPad Pro charged 100%. After about 2 hours, she was at 83%. Students in the first period started with 100% and some stayed at 100% while others were mid 90s after class ended. After the third class, she was down to 61%. Some kids said they were down by 20% but have background app refresh on.

We are a one-to-one iPad school. We do not share iPads so I have not tested that part of Apple Classroom.

[jgwatson]

Got mine to work after speaking to tech support. We originally had static groups for Casper Focus, and I assumed they would transfer over. I had to manually create each class again and enroll student's individually.

So far we like it.

[jbutler47]

Our initial tests this week are proving to be very positive and creating a nice buzz amongst staff, follow the guides to the letter though.

Seeing some lag issues with students getting the edu profile that allows Classroom connectivity. Still investigating, but will probably rebuild the affected class once all the users are at iOS 9.3.1.

Try it, the teachers will love it,and love you.

[CasperSally]

Is there some matrix somewhere with minimum specs required (iOS and hardware) for Apple Classroom, Shared devices, and Apple School Manager?

[peter]

@jgwatson In 9.9 and 9.91 the only supported method to enable Apple Classroom with JSS Classes is to use Users or User Groups in JSS classes. Mobile Device Groups should work as you were expecting them to in the next release, though the targeted mobile devices still need to be assigned to a user in the JSS.

There's some discussion here regarding a workaround, but I can't say how effective that would be long-term.

As to your last question, since Apple Classroom relies on proximity there's no need to set up class times to use Classroom.

[cdenesha]

@CasperSally Classroom requirements

[jbutler47]

Removing and reapplying student and/or devices per class seems to resolve a stale deployment of the EDU profile. Much obliged.

For the earlier post, running one Mac Pro server 32GB for JSS and another (same setup) for MySQL.

[aaron_kelley]

So do you absolutely have to add students into a smart/static user group in order to use the app properly? Or can you just use static mobile groups with however many iPads you need in that given group (like Casper Focus)?

Why I ask...we do our student email name scheme according to their student ID numbers, and for the elementary here, we get tons of entry/withdrawals. So we chose to do an easy route (before Classroom) and assign iPads to static mobile groups, then the same name "CES-CART" translates to class groups "CES-CLASS" so all we would have to worry about is device assignment and not device assignment to that particular student. This has worked well and has been easy, but i'm really looking at the Classroom app since it's so fluid and it allows screen view.

[St0rMl0rD]

AFAIK, the Classroom is user based, so device groups can't be used.

[aaron_kelley]

@St0rMl0rD that's a bummer...I figured as much, but wasn't absolutely sure. We already assign MacBooks in Middle and High per user, so if we were to go with Classroom, i'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to change.

[cdenesha]

Yes - adding Devices to the Classroom/Roster is only used for Configuring Shared iPads.

[peter]

@aaron.kelley @St0rMl0rD @cdenesha In the 9.92 beta classes configured with Mobile Device Groups instead of Users or User Groups will deploy the correct configuration profile to the device assuming the device is associated with a User.

[cdenesha]

There are probably many districts that aren't assigning students to devices (i.e. high turnover districts like @aaron.kelley's or districts using shared devices). This worked with Casper Focus but Apple Classroom is 100% user-centric.

Probably the only way to implement would be a different fake student for each iPad, and those 'students' would need to be in the Class/Roster.

[cdenesha]

Yes, the Devices section of the Classes/Roster is only for Shared iPads.

[edullum]

@wdpickle did that really fix it? I'm curious as to how that fixed it when Apple Classroom works off bluetooth.

[edullum]

I currently have a ticket open with JAMF, but I wanted to reach out to the community to see if anyone else is seeing this issue that our environment is seeing:

Is anyone else getting the error message of
I have verified that both the teacher and student device is on:
iOS 9.3 or higher
Bluetooth is enabled
Device is Managed and Supervised
EDU Configuration profile has been installed on both teacher and student iPads.

When I tried to navigate to the EDU Configuration Profile on both devices via: Settings>General>Device Management>MDM Profile
The iPad crashed to the springboard.

I connected the iPad to iOS Console on Mac and ran through the above steps to capture a log file. When I launched the Apple Classroom App, the log file indicated that the “Provided configuration was invalid”
10 07:26:02 DMPMMTBEFK10 Classroom[312] <Notice>: (Error) <CRPreflightViewController.m -[CRPreflightViewController writeConfigOperationDidFinish:]:174> Failed to write configuration with error: NSError: 0x154e7d710
Desc : The provided configuration was invalid. When I went into the MDM Configuration Profile, the log file indicated that “Object cannot be null”
May 10 07:26:43 DMPMMTBEFK10 Preferences[313] <Error>: Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: ' -[__NSArrayM insertObject:atIndex:]: object cannot be null'

[wdpickle]

@edullum it is P2P protocol that is blocked on our network, so we had to make an exception for it. I understand that it is supposed to all happen bluetooth, however, without that exception it would not work in our environment. We passed that along to the Apple folks early on, things may have changed. (I am still not removing the exception, "if it ain't broke...")

[edullum]

@wdpickle I'm going to implement that on one of our WAPs to see if it works. Did you just create that service, or did you make any other adjustments in Aruba? Did you enable sharing or did you just add the service?

[wdpickle]

We created it. We basically copied the set up for air play and called it apple classroom.

[wdpickle]

I looked it up and took a screen shot of the config. Really nothing to it (for us)

[edullum]

We mirrored that setup and it still doesn't work :(

[aaron_kelley]

Okay, so here's my next question...

I have set up (in testing) a smart user group with the AD accounts I wanted. I setup a Test Mobile Device Class and added that user group of the AD accounts to the class. I then assigned a teacher AD account to that class. Then, I assigned each AD account to the iPads I wanted assigned. So, 1 teacher iPad and a few "student" iPads. I tested it and it worked perfectly. Didn't need an Apple ID or anything for this. So essentially it worked as Casper Focus would, only difference is having to create a smart user group and assign the AD accounts to the iPads.

Here's our concern since our school district would rather not have to assign tons of Apple ID's for shared iPad's on how Apple tells you to. How can we pull AD account users into a bulk set of iPads like we would like? So say we have a class of 20 students and we want to assign 20 AD accounts to 20 iPads without having to manual input this data... is that doable?

[edullum]

You would have to enroll each iPad with an AD account if you are not using the "Shared iPads" feature.

The current JSS does not have the capability to create a Smart Mobile Device group based on LDAP groups yet.

You CAN create a Mobile Deice Extension Attribute with an LDAP Attribute Mapping and then create a Smart Mobile Device Group based off that LDAP Attribute. You can find this in the JSS under Settings, Mobile Device Management, Extension Attributes. You can find out exactly what LDAP Attributes you want in Active Directory Administrative Center under Extensions and Attribute Editor (for a running list of attributes).

[edullum]

@hottingert How many classes do you have imported from your SIS, and does your JSS import them on a daily basis?

[hottingert]

@edullum We imported over 300 classes but that is somewhat deceiving because of the way PowerSchool is set up for us with semester classes. That is a whole other issue.

I used the JSS Conduit Importer to bring in the classes for Casper Focus awhile back so I did not have to re-import the classes again for Apple Classroom. I made sure not to import the times for classes as our schedules change way too often.

And it is not updated daily but I believe there is an option for that.

[aaron_kelley]

So by importing like this, it assigns the AD account to a particular iPad (in bulk) so that all we would have to do is adjust classes or groups accordingly? The iPad assigning is our main hurdle with this since we would rather not enter the data manually. And through my testing, (sorry Casper) Classroom is more fluid and the screen viewing is a big +1. All we would have to do is essentially export a csv or even spreadsheet file from SAM and obtain the AD information to import to each class if importing like said would work well.

[edullum]

Let me clarify my terms:
Enroll: Setting up the physical iPad by connecting it to wifi, and signing into it with an AD account. Then (as long as the iPad is in your JSS Pre-Stage enrollment) the iPad will now appear in Mobile Devices.
There is no way to "bulk" enroll iPads into the JSS. You literally have to touch each iPad and enroll them to be managed in the JSS.

Once the iPad is enrolled in the JSS, you can then create the extension attribute like I mentioned in the post above. Then create the Smart Group based off that extension attribute. Then you can assign all the iPads with that "extension attribute" to that class.

[aaron_kelley]

@edullum Well, I know what enrolling is :~). I never really questioned on "enrolling" but rather assigning the AD accounts and have it in a way where we didn't have to type in each AD username into each individual iPad within JSS. We've already used the iPads this year, so everything is already enrolled if that helps.
And I thought you couldn't automatically assign iPads to AD accounts, as there's nothing to sign in to like that of a MacBook for instance. Correct me if i'm wrong...

[cdenesha]

@aaron.kelley If you are using DEP then you can configure the PreStage to require authentication. It then assigns the iPad to this AD username on enrollment.

I don't know if we'll soon have the ability to assign a group of students to the class, and also a group of iPads that aren't specifically assigned, and have it all work. It doesn't in 9.91 and earlier..

So back to your original question - how to assign usernames to iPads in bulk.

Here's our concern since our school district would rather not have to assign tons of Apple ID's for shared iPad's on how Apple tells you to. How can we pull AD account users into a bulk set of iPads like we would like? So say we have a class of 20 students and we want to assign 20 AD accounts to 20 iPads without having to manual input this data... is that doable?

There is no built-in way to do this. You would need to leverage the API to do this with your csv (lots of threads on jamfnation about the API).

You mentioned 'shared iPads', but I don't think you mean the new Shared iPad capability from Apple. This new method requires powerful iPads with a lot of space, and they must be enrolled with DEP and a special PreStage. They would then be shared by Managed Apple ID.

[chris_miller]

I don't know if we'll soon have the ability to assign a group of students to the class, and also a group of iPads that aren't specifically assigned, and have it all work. It doesn't in 9.91 and earlier..

Doesn't this work on the same classes as did Casper Focus? We dumped a SIS import and updated those tables for the past two years using the JSS Import tool.

We also scope our iPads based on AD authentication and force that in Pre-Stage. Works like a charm. I created a test class today and it worked well, even off campus using a hotspot. (I needed my Starbucks!) We are a 1:1 environment and assign names to iPads, but we do it based on the device and not the user. This will be a problem. However, the picture of the kid can be updated via the Contacts on the iPad. So the teacher can see the picture of the student.

I need to do more testing in our environment, especially with the P2P feature. This is such a cool tool for teachers, that I'm really invested in making it work well.

Now if JAMF would allow for automated SIS integration... hint, hint, hint!

[cdenesha]

@csm0004

a group of iPads that aren't specifically assigned

It works on the same classes, yes. I was referring to iPads that are not assigned to a user.

[mpittcasd]

I'm having the same Configuration Invalid problem that @edullum is having when trying to set up Classroom last week. Is anyone else still getting that error? @wdpickle what was the set up for the AirPlay service you used for Classroom also? I don't have access to anything and have to pass it along to our network admin.

Also how is everyone setting their classes up? I didn't see any kind of template for importing the class and student info into the JSS. We are switching to a new SIS right now so I asked if that will be able to export to Apple Classroom Manager and from there into the JSS but didn't get a confirmation that we will be using the Apple management at all.

[wdpickle]

@AdamBritt sorry for the delay in responding, they screwed up and let me have vacation ;) I have attached a screen shot of the Aruba set up. Pretty basic, but it worked for us.

[lizmowens]

Jumping in here to see if someone can assist me in the issue I'm having. We're 1:1 iPads grades 1-4. I set up Classroom, set up classes in CS, assigned teachers and students to those individual classes, which seemed pretty simple. However, I apparently have missed a step or done something wrong. One of my 4th grade teachers just came to show me her Classroom app, where she can not only see all of her 4th grade students, but the 1st grade students are showing up as well. I have verified that she is only assigned as the teacher for the 4th grade classes as well as double checking that the 1st grade students are indeed assigned to a 1st grade class. Is this an issue from the teacher iPad set-up side or the JSS side? TIA for pointing me in the right direction!

[Zeek]

How do I export and import list from power school to apple school management?

[RLR]

How reliable are people finding bluetooth? We've had some staff mention that students can suddenly turn grey even though their bluetooth is still on. Anyone else experiencing this?