In-House eBooks

[LukeMason]

Hey there,

I was hoping someone could clarify some stuff about In-House eBooks.

We have a number of teachers who are using "iBooks Author" to create their own ebooks, and they have enquired about the possibility of distributing these to their classes.

We are trying to be as "device based" as possible. For our iPad carts, we don't use Apple IDs & we have the "lock account settings" restriction in place.

I was looking at the Jamf Administrator's Guide, and it says (under requirements):

*To distribute an in-house eBook, the eBook must be one of the following types of files:

ePub file (.epub)
iBooks file (.ibooks)
PDF

To install an ePub file, you need:

A mobile device with iOS 4 or later and iBooks 1.0 or later
A computer with macOS v10.7 or later and an application to view eBooks

To install an iBooks file, you need:

An iPad with iOS 5 or later and iBooks 2.0 or later
A computer with macOS v10.9 or later and iBooks 1.0 or later"*

I am aware that I need an Apple ID to distribute content from the iBooks Store, but I was hoping I could distribute "homemade" ebooks in-house (without an Apple ID).

I've tried testing both distribution methods (Self Service & Automatic) and in both of these cases, the pdf installs without issue, but both ePub and iBooks format give me an error that "The MDM request is invalid" (see attached screenshot

I've also noticed that if I open the url to the book in Safari, a link pops up to "open in iBooks", which then imports the book without requiring an Apple ID...

Am I missing something, or is this expected behaviour?

[blackholemac]

When doing an In-house book, I usually host on a separate web site. If you don't wish to do that, try this article:

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/articles/205/hosting-in-house-ebooks-and-apps-on-a-tomcat-instance

[jared_f]

We use Amazon Web Services, I use the S3 bucket and create one for iBooks, add the files to it and then create a sharable link and then give it out to the users and/or create a link in out endpoint client (like Self Service). Let the users know, for larger files it may take a bit of time to load (depending on your internet speed).

Jared

[LukeMason]

Hi guys, thanks for responding.

For this testing, I've been hosting the files on our knowledge base web-server, which is completely independent of our JSS.

Have either of you successfully "in-house" distributed an ".ibooks" format file from Self-Service without an Apple ID?

[dlistwa]

We had the same problem with the distribution points. We were directed to the same tomcat article as included in blackholemac's response above. It has worked very well for us so far.

We have successfully distributed books in .ibooks format for in-house books using this method, and no Apple ID was required. There is a prompt to open in iBooks, and iBooks has prompted the user for an Apple ID when opening the app the first time, but after bypassing the Apple ID request, our users were still able to access the in-house .ibooks file.

Hope this helps!

[blackholemac]

We have gotten .iBooks files deployed both by website and by Jamf's article. Basically, it would all work easier for most if you use a JDS as your distribution point. You can deploy in house ebooks the "straight forward" way by uploading them to your JDS-based distribution point.

That being said, a JDS is not the answer for us in our org for a multitude of reasons. I also don't use the JAMF article I listed where you add a folder to your Tomcat instance. Not because it doesn't work, but because we use a cluster of JSS Tomcat instances. I don't want to have to replicate that 'inhouse' folder to all Tomcat instances and make sure to put it back after every manual Tomcat update. So we tend to host our inhouse .ibooks files on a separate web server.

For folks having trouble hosting on a separate website, a common problem is MIME types on your web server...make sure you have that in order before deploying this widely by testing on 1-2 devices internally first.

[LukeMason]

Excellent! This is encouraging news! Thanks again for responding.

We also have clustered environment, but I'll take a closer look at the article and see if we can work something there.

We tried using JDS's when they were first introduced, but found that using file share distribution points in our schools was easier for us to manage.

@blackholemac Thanks for tip regarding MIME types, I'll do some research and see what I can find out.

[LukeMason · Accepted solution]

I've finally gotten this figured out (with the help of Jamf Technical Support).

If anyone else is having similar problems, there were 2 things that I needed to do to get this working:

1. Ensure that there is a version number associated with your in-house ebooks
2. Ensure that there are no spaces in your filenames for your ebooks

After I added a version number and removed the spaces from my filenames, the ebooks started deploying as expected.