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Question

Enrolling iPad without WiFI

  • August 9, 2013
  • 5 replies
  • 34 views
L
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Hi All,

We are a school with about 1300 student iPads. We use Casper to push about 6 profiles to the iPads, including our WiFi profile and certificate. Our WiFi is configured so that you must have a certificate installed to get connection and I have no access or control over our Wireless LAN controller.

The problem I have is that we are continually getting a stream of students who have reset their iPads and so need to re-enrol in Casper so that they can get access to our WiFi. To do this, we have to join them to an insecure wifi router which we use for testing exernal connections, enrol them in Casper, wait for all 6 profiles to download, then remove them from the insecure wifi network and join them to our school network.

Is there a better way to do this? Can I push all these profiles to the device using the IPCU or some other program? (and will this be functionally equivalent to an OTA wrt smart groups and control of the iPads?)

The OTA enrolment generally works quite well, but it's a chicken-and-egg situation where I have to put them onto a wifi network so that I can enrol them to get the certificate for the official wifi network.

Cheers,
Chris.

    5 replies

    D
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    • dgreening
    • Honored Contributor
    • August 9, 2013

    iOS7 can't get here soon enough!

    J
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    • JPDyson
    • Valued Contributor
    • August 9, 2013

    Side-load the profiles with Configurator?

    RobertHammen
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    • RobertHammen
    • Esteemed Contributor
    • August 9, 2013

    Run into this sort of thing all of the time.

    Use Configurator, use a "Guest" wireless network (and be sure your JSS is exposed at least to that network as well), or use some other "setup" network. No other "easy" solutions...

    L
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    • lhscasper
    • Author
    • Contributor
    • August 9, 2013

    Hmm, it seems even with configurator I need a wifi network to enrol.

    DGreening, what is ios7 bringing to the party? I haven't been reading much about it as yet.

    I
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    • ItsMe_Sean
    • Contributor
    • August 12, 2013

    Hi OP

    I assume you are using a Enrollment profile to enroll your iPads?
    If you are, the way I do it is I create a Wi-Fi profile in configurator and to join our enrollment network (unsecured network with very limited access, can only talk to the JSS and APN servers) which is then set to delete itself after 1 day. I push the Wi-Fi profile to the iPad and then push the Enrollment profile downloaded from the JSS to the iPad using configurator, AFTER the Wi-Fi profile is loaded and connected, otherwise the Enrollment profile will fail.

    Once those are both installed it will talk to the JSS and download the profiles, as long as the iPad is put into the right scope (or no scope if you have it set that way) and away the iPad goes.

    You can either remove the Wi-Fi profile manually via the settings, or keep the iPad for 24 hours until the Wi-Fi profile removes itself.

    The above is for iOS6 devices. I am hoping this will change with iOS7 which brings a whole lot of new management options to the iOS side of device management.

    We haven't had much chance to play around with iOS7 management over here, so I don't know how much it will bring (hoping it will bring a lot)

    If you are using "nsdjoe" method of deploying App store apps in house, using https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=7446 , remember to restore the iPad from the encrypted backup you would have made on the imaging computer.

    I think I've included everything, to the extent of my knowledge anyway.

    Regards
    Sean

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