iPad's stay Offline in the Classroom App.

[PatrickvEs]

I Configured 9 new classes with students and teachers. All works fine in Casper Focus but in the Classroom all iPad's show up in the different classes but all are offline. Has anybody an idea what this could be?

[pvelliquette]

A couple things to check:

Bluetooth must be on on both the student and teacher iPad. Bluetooth is how the iPad's greet each other to make the initial connection.

Student and teacher iPads must be connected to the Internet. This is how commands are sent back and forth.

I have seen it happen where if the teacher iPad stops communicating (app switching) then I'd does not reconnect to the student devices when it begins communicating again and displays all devices as offline. In this case, restarting the app fixes the communication glitch.

You have EDU setup in the JSS or you would not see classes in the Classroom app.

My strongest guess is that Bluetooth is off or that the iPads are out of range of the teacher iPad's Bluetooth or that the student iPads are simply powered down for the night. Hope this helps!!

[jmctighe]

Is there anyway to put a bypass on the apple classroom in a web filter?

We use a captive portal at the school and if the pupils do not log in it means the teacher cannot see the device.

[PatrickvEs]

Bluetooth is on on both devices.
both devices are connected to the same WIFI

App has been restarted serveral times.

Marked the Enable Apple Education Support checkmark

both devices are next to eachother

still no succes :(

[brad]

Do you see the EDU Profile on the device?

Settings/General/Device Management/MDM Profile/More Details
Look for Education Configuration, under that you should see your organization name. Tap that, then you should see the classes and the users. Does that look consistent with what is in Casper?

Good luck,

Brad

[david_yenzer]

We had one instance where a teacher took her teacher iPad to a conference off-campus and came back to find Classroom wasn't seeing student devices. When we stopped in to troubleshoot, all we did was turn Bluetooth off/on to get it playing nice again.

[david_yenzer]

Could also try ensuring Location Services is turned on. I don't think it's necessary (since most of our iPads don't have it turned on), but it's another thing to try.

[pvelliquette]

You are assigning users to the classes, not devices, right? Also, be sure the student devices are getting the EDU profile. You can create a smart group that will sniff out any devices that do not have it.

[andy_cadotte]

I had the same experience as David. Switched off bluetooth and switched it back on. The teacher device then saw all students in that class again. In this instance the teacher had connected to a blue tooth speaker at home.

[mpittcasd]

Sorry to bump an old topic but I'm having the same issue.

I am testing a class on my iPad with one of our teachers that will be utilizing the Classroom app. I had myself added as a student but it always showed me as offline. I added two fresh iPads which are showing up in Classrom though, so I deleted my iPad from the JSS and re-enrolled hoping it would show up but I am still offline. I finally toggled Bluetooth off and on both on mine and the teacher iPad with no luck.

The two iPads that are working were previous assignments that were collected, wiped, and enrolled via DEP just now for testing. I wouldn't think it necessary to wipe and set up again first, and I'm hesitant to do so to my iPad, but have any of you in this thread had a similar experience or find a solution since the last time?

[brad]

@AdamBritt Did the device get the eduction profile after you reenrolled? Also, did a new profile get sent to the teacher device? Try restarting tomcat and see if the profiles get sent out and things start working.

Good luck!

[mpittcasd]

The education profiles are being pushed out. I was checking on the iPads in the JSS and it shows they are pending immediately after the changes to the classes. The teacher and students are both showing multiple education profiles having installed in the Completed Commands section.

I did end up wiping my iPad and restoring the iTunes backup as well as setting it up as a new iPad but it's still showing as offline. In between each of these attempts I removed my user entry from the JSS and also deleted the iPad record to make sure it was fresh.

One theory we had was if someone was set up as a teacher in one class could they be a student in another?

[jgwatson]

I had this issue, but I was using smart/static groups within the JSS to populate my classrooms. JAMF told me that wouldn't work, so I had to manually add them to each class. Worked like a charm after that.

[nhammer1]

How did you add individual devices to the class? All I see is Mobile Device Groups.

[cdenesha]

@nhammer1 Your users have to be assigned to the Mobile Device. The Mobile Device Groups is just for Shared iPad.

[chzar]

I am actually having a similar problem, but it is intermittent. Devices take a very long time to finally show online and some never show online at all. I have already checked wifi and BT. Id appreciate any suggestions.

[bvondeylen]

Make sure each device has a user associated with the device (each device should have a Username and Full Name in the User and Location part of Mobile Device Inventory)

Make sure each user is in the jss only once, and that they have a device associated with them (should have a 1 in the Mobile Devices column in User Inventory)

[PatrickvEs]

We got it working now. Some firewall settings needed to be changed. The next challenge is to keep the bleutooth on on the iPad's

[edullum]

@PatrickvEs You can create a configuration profile and uncheck the box next to Allow modifying bluetooth settings (supervised only) However, once this is pushed out to devices and if devices have bluetooth turned off, their bluetooth setting will be locked into the off position. It's best to get all the iPads with bluetooth ON and then push out the configuration profile.

This isn't a fool proof way of keeping bluetooth turned on. Once students figure out that if they enable Airplane mode, it will turn off bluetooth....#womp

[PatrickvEs]

@edullum Thx for the input. I also found this option but we choose to demand that bluetooth is on when the device is in school. When te device is outside the schoolborders students and parents demand that there devices are free of this kind of policies.

[dpeleg]

Hi @PatrickvEs I am having similar problems, and found out that it is the network that is causing the problems.
Other than opening ports 3283 and 3284, what else needs to be done.
I know that it is something within our network, because when I connect the devices to a wifi on a simple router, the iPads appear online.

I have a cisco wireless controller, and a Dell Sonicwall firewall (on which I opened the relevant ports)

[MichelZ]

If I understood correctly,
to use the classroom app with shared ipads, the teacher's iPad should not be shared. That's right ???
So what's the use of creating class-affiliated teacher accounts in ASM ???

[erwin_c]

That teacher would only be able to view/access the afflicted class in the Apple Classroom app.