Deployment of purchased books to iOS

DaneAbernathy
New Contributor III

First a bit of background:

We are a higher-ed institution that has a small cohort of international students.

We deploy a purchased book from ASM to all incoming freshmen that our board wants them to have when they leave (we allow personal Apple IDs on our devices since they pay for them and they are theirs to keep, so when the VPP invite happens, their personal Apple IDs are linked to their Jamf user account on the backend)

In previous years we used VPP codes and registration email invites; it was troublesome at times, to say the least.

This year, to make it easier, we are deploying through Self Service and VPP registration invites through notifications. For 90% of our users, the process works perfectly if they followed directions. 

We already know the issues that arise with what region the Apple ID was created in, and we know the fix for this - US based Apple ID, or we give them access to the library's copy (we only have 10 concurrent licenses with this method, so it can't be used for all students).

And now the problem:

We are seeing some strange behavior with a small handful US-based Apple IDs - if the account does not have a payment method set up, they cannot install the book. Supposedly in previous years, that was not the case; anyone with an Apple ID could get the book, even without a payment method setup.

I see the same error that International students get when they accept the VPP invite, but the book cannot be installed using their international Apple ID.

The error in Jamf under the management tab in Devices is:

"Could not find volume purchase program assignment."

It shows for non-US-based Apple IDs, and the handful of users having the issue where they can't install the book.

Also, according to Apple's documentation, you MUST set up a payment method from the new region to transfer your Apple ID to another region. This is what is leading me to believe the problem is Apple ID accounts with no payment method, like the error any non-US-based Apple ID would get. 

So, with all of that info, here is my question and a summation of the problem:

A handful of US-based users are getting the same error in Jamf Pro an international student would get when they try installing a book. These students do not have payment methods set up on their Apple IDs.

Does an Apple ID have to have a payment method set up for the account to receive paid content from our ASM through Jamf?

 

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