iMessages not populating on new device

[lfriedo]

We have purchased iPhone upgrades for a few of our users.  They all came out of the box with iOS 16.X. They are setup in Jamf Pro with prestage enrollments with configurations that do not restrict using messages or having their own individual Apple ID's on the device.  We have 1 user who has reset and switched phones 3 times and had their messages populate on their "new" device (which was supervised in Jamf Pro with the same configurations) successfully with the only difference we can find being that those devices were on iOS 15.x at the time.  We now have 4 users who have not been able to get their messages to load on their new device and have halted the remaining users from swapping until we can figure this out.  Those users all have their settings->iCloud->messages turned on (sync this iPhone) and the manage storage is showing an amount that seems reasonable to what they have with messages.  They all are either under the 5GB free limit for iCloud or are paying for additional iCloud storage.  Their settings->Messages have iMessage turned on.  Does anyone know what setting we are missing to get the messages to download to their new devices or what might be the issue?

[AJPinto]

The best I can suggest is to release one of the old iPhones from management, and unassign one of the new phones and try a totally out of the box upgrade to see if messages sync. This will tell you if JAMF is doing something which I doubt it is.

This may be something you need to run by Apple.

[piotrr]

Are the new phones showing a status at the bottom of the Messages app? 

What about the old phones - what sync status are they displaying at the bottom of the messages app? 

[lfriedo · Accepted solution]

We figured it out.  The end users were either not turning on sync and a few settings under messages directly or they weren't understanding that they needed to connect to WiFi and plug in their devices overnight so the sync could complete.  We did lose messages for one user as we reset their phone prior to the sync being able to complete but now we know not to do that again.

[piotrr]

Glad you did. It's just slow enough that you have time to think it's not working, and both devices need to have sync settings. 

Personally I wish I could disable all of iMessage for all users.