Follow-up discussion on Bringing VPP & DEP to Life and redemption code conversion to MDM

[david_yenzer]

I'm not sure if someone else has posted anything on this, but I thought it would be worth following up on Tuesday's session for "Bringing VPP & DEP to Life" that touched briefly on the new feature of pushing apps without having to use an Apple ID.

At least for our district this is a HUGE deal and I'm surprised it wasn't even mentioned in the keynote. I suspect there will be more discussion in Thursday's 2:30 session "VPP & DEP Panel", but thought I'd at least post some details from our experience.

Most of our apps were previously being pushed via configurator and redeemable codes. After our decision to move to the MDM management of apps, I began the process by logging into our VPP account and downloading all the codes from our purchase history and then uploading them into the JSS. Our understanding at the time was that we would lose any licenses that had been burned via configurator or by manually entering them on a device...generally thinking that for every round of 30 iPads we'd be lucky to get 29 back. After that process was completed, we got what we got.

Then we updated to JSS 9.81 and started running through the process and hitting the brick walls that were involved in distributing apps through the JSS without requiring an Apple ID - redeemable codes don't work here, they have to be "MDM". This was verified by accidentally having purchased some Minecraft licenses via MDM and those apps being successfully installed while several older redeemable code apps failed.

That's when we discovered the "conversion" process that Apple will do for you - in bulk - to process ALL of your redeemable codes and convert them to MDM. At this point we were operating under the same license recovery assumption - however, we were told that we would actually get back all the configurator-associated licenses also. It appears this is true, as for many apps by comparison to the prior process of uploading the redeemable apps into the JSS compared to what we received after the conversion there were some significant gains. One of our larger apps with over 1600 licenses recovered about 150 licenses that were previously thought to be burned. My rough guess is that adding up the value of these licenses gained compared to what we thought was burned recovered several thousand dollars.

Also, just to clarify, the MDM conversion process can be done AGAIN - the only catch is that they convert them all at the same time. However, if you go back and buy some redeemable codes after a conversion for whatever purpose and later want to convert those to MDM at some point in the future, you can do that. Same process. It's not a one-and-done-forever.

The process for free apps is the same as for the paid apps - go into the VPP store and buy licenses. Then you can distribute them without needing an Apple ID.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. I just wanted to follow up on this topic, especially the piece about recovering licenses after conversion since many folks were discussing it at the end of the session.