Getting state purchased machines into our DEP

[blairb]

Due to a mistake on someone's behalf, our normal yearly purchase of MacBook Airs was purchased by the Dept of Education rather than us. I am now looking at the possibility of having to enroll 280 machines without using DEP. This seems like an absolute nightmare. Is anyone aware of a way to get these machines into our DEP? Our Apple SE seems to think there's no way, but frankly, I've been given incorrect advice from them in the past.

[dgreening]

The only way that you could do it would be to have them contact their vendor and have the vendor associate them with your company's DEP/ABM ID. You could then assign them to your Jamf server in ABM (or let auto-assign do its thing) once they are associated with ABM, and you should be off to the races.

[blairb]

Thanks dgreening. No idea how I'm going to get in touch with them, but this is a good start.

[Taylor_Armstron]

Unfortunately, going to be difficult. Hopeful that you get it working though - I know a few other places that run into this kind of thing and have more or less shrugged and not tried too hard.

[dgreening]

Apple is unfortunately a lot of no help when you buy through a reseller. This is an incentive to buy direct through Apple via PO. I feel your pain, as do many of us. As vendors come and go from large global organizations, managing the enrollment of ABM devices becomes a royal pain in the arse...

[sdagley]

@dgreening When I was working on the K12 side 2 years ago Apple wouldn't allow resellers to sell Macs to us, so hopefully the vendor in @blairb's case is Apple itself. They should definitely be able to figure out how to transfer Macs between ASM accounts. (And it's surprising the Apple SE involved wouldn't know that)

[blairb]

Extra frustrating as we've been strictly DEP/PreStage Enrollment for a very long time now. I'd go as far as saying we were early adopters. To have to change my entire imaging paradigm for one year's worth of computers is a little too much for me to swallow.

[PaulHazelden]

You should be able to give all of the serial numbers to Apple. They will then search and find the Apple Purchase ID for those devices. From there Apple can then add them to your DEP. The Apple Purchase ID is not the order number from your supplier, it is an internal number to Apple. We have had some purchases made from online companies who do not do the DEP thing at all. We contacted Apple, and they used the serial numbers to find the Macs and then they added them to our DEP for us.

[blairb]

Trying this now Paul. I called EDU Sales... is that the right place?

[PaulHazelden]

Yes we did it through our sales people at Apple.

[blairb]

Our EDU rep is the one that told me he couldn't do anything and redirected me to our SE. I couldn't even reach anyone at EDU sales. Left a message. Not expecting to ever hear back sadly.

[PaulHazelden]

They certainly can do it, they just have to be willing. Try one of your resellers, they all have access to Apple, and may be able to help you find a willing person in Apple.

[blairb]

We always buy directly from Apple, so I don't believe we have any resellers to contact.

[GabeShack]

We have dealt with this before. In NJ any state funding for tech for private and special needs schools gets funneled through the local public school district. In one such case the purchase was accidentally assigned to our district. The private school emailed me info for their MDM (also JAMF) and sent me a token so I could un-assign it from my district and reassign it to their school for management.
Worked quite well and now I keep that instance in my Apple School Manager just in case we have the issue come up again.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[blackholemac]

While I am no direct help to the original poster, I will note that it is possible to have someone else to buy the devices and you take ownership of them...In my environment we have a screwy situation where we have a A multi school district cooperative sometimes desires to purchase Apple devices. In the bylaws for the cooperative, one district (not ours) is in charge of purchasing while a different one (ours) is in charge of technology maintenance. Every time they need an Apple purchase made, We have to fill out a form with the Apple rep having the other district cede ownership immediately on close of the purchase...high level signatures of both districts required. It works but is ugly. I will see if I have a copy of the form blank to post if it helps anyone.

Ps. Update...I have attached a blanked Photoshop version of the form (sorry...it was all filled out with graphical signatures). I would check with your Apple rep to get an updated version of it as it's dated 2016. I will note that we used it after the fact so it is possible...to the original poster @blairb , your challenge would be finding a legally competent (no snide commentary intended) individual at the DOE you are working with to sign this form and find your district's "legally competent individual" to sign it and once that is done, your Apple rep should be able to shove it through. We had to work with both our inside sales rep and our SE together at Apple for this.

link to form on my OneDrive

[blairb]

Thanks to everyone in this thread. Still working on this. Having a hell of a time even reaching anyone at DOE, surprise surprise. Unsurprisingly, I've yet to hear back from Apple.