Best Practice for End User App Management

[zwilson50]

I am wondering what others are doing in regards to Capser Suite, app management and the end user. We are a small to medium sized K12 environment and I would like to off load some of the iOS app management work to the ipad teachers. Is there a way to do this via district approved app portal, elevated roles for end users, etc?

I want to see this happen so we can expedite the end users requests for apps on their classroom iPads for students. Our current method of managing iPads seems cumbersome so anything we can do to alleviate the amount of time it takes to manage iPads and apps, the better.

Thanks for your help,

Zach
Technology Director

[mmcallister]

You can set your iPad teachers to the Content Manager role in Apple School Manager to allow them to assign apps.

[fsjjeff]

I'm wondering about the exact same thing - managing apps and scopes in Jamf Pro seems very clunky at best, and if you start to get many iterations of configurations it spirals into a mess pretty fast.

I was rather shocked to see that Jamf Now has an amazing "Blueprints" feature where you seem to be able to say that all teacher flagged devices get a list of apps and profiles. In Jamf Pro to do the same thing you need to scope each and every app individually. Porting the Blueprints feature to Jamf Pro would help immensely with the general configurations.

That wouldn't resolve the question about how to configure requested apps for specific classes though. I'm not sure what the answer to that is as we're struggling with the same issue. I looked into the Content Manger in ASM based on mmcallister's comment above, and to the best of my understanding you can't actually assign apps to JSS scope there, or am I misunderstanding something? Or is it possible to scope by managed user? If so that would explain why I'm not seeing it as we're not allowed (government regs) to use the student ASM accounts.

[zwilson50]

Thank you both for the responses. I am trying to find a better, more efficient, way to manage the iPads and apps than what is currently happening. With our IT staff numbers low, the amount of time it takes to manage apps leads to longer turnaround times. Thus, teaching staff are frustrated. I will foward the ASM suggestion on to my Apple lead and see what we can do.

Thanks again.

[mmcallister]

I may have been mistaken - Content Managers may only be able to purchase licenses. Assigning them appears to be an MDM function so your iPad teachers may need JSS accounts.