Manually Adding TVs to ABM and JAMF

[Bill_Hofius]

Happy Monday All!

My organization has about 40 TVs scattered across 21 locations all over the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin). TVs are generally used in the common areas of our locations to display video content for customers and in employee break rooms.

Less then a dozen of the TVs were purchased through our business account with Apple and show up in ABM and JAMF. The other 30 or so TVs were purchased from various 3rd party retailers and of course do not show up in ABM or JAMF.

We've recently learned that employees at our locations have been signing into their personal AppleIDs on the TVs and signing into their personal Netflix/Hulu/HBO accounts. We want to prevent this and standardize the video content experience at each location. (We have a solution in place for the content part.)

So my question is this--how can I add all of these rouge 3rd party purchased TVs to JAMF? I am hoping that it can be done remotely and that I do not have to be on-site and connect the TV to Apple Configurator.

[MrRoboto]

If the retailer supports ABM they you can ask them to add the devices to your account. If not then the only option is to use Apple Configurator to add the devices.

[Bill_Hofius]

I don't believe Target and Best Buy support ABM. 😏

This is what I was afraid of. The devices are at locations scattered all over the Upper Midwest. I'm able to either easily or quickly get to each site.

[Andreas_Schenk]

If you are going the way of using AC2 to do the provisional DEP Enrollment to add them to ABM / ASM:

Follow the Apple Guide closely. Still, be prepared for some frustration. To my experience, it DOES work, but not always. In my experience, this has been very flaky. It helps to have the Mac running AC2 and the ATV on the same wired Ethernet right next to each other.

For me the most reliable way of getting this to work was doing this one by one, AC2 Mac, the Apple TV and an Access Point with a dedicated SSID (and bridged to ethernet) on the same switch. Connected to the Internet without any Proxy / Filter etc. That was what worked for me most of the time, but your milage might vary.  

[Bill_Hofius]

Thanks for the reply and the advice. Since some of the TVs are hundreds of miles and several hours of driving away from me, I was hoping to be able to set them up remotely using serial numbers and IP addresses or some other bit of magical voodoo. 

[Andreas_Schenk]

In Apples view of the world, ASM/ABM registration is a proof of ownership, granting the institutional admin huge power (through automated enrollment & supervision). If this was open remotely, it would be a huge attack vector for hackers/scammers or other malicious intentions. Requiring physical access and a reset of the device makes it clear for the end user that the device is undergoing a major change. We as admins should be planning ahead and buy only devices with ABM/ASM registration. We heard this from Apple since they came up with DEP in ... was it 2012 or 2014? I don't remember ... too long ago. Listening and planning avoids pain later on. Now, you are stuck with recollecting and painfully resetting devices, that are already deployed.

[stevenmilo]

You can use a live TV service, just need an internet connection, you can watch it even when you are far away.

[Aruky · Accepted solution]

We've tried to add several Apple TVs via AC2. As has been said before , very flaky and unpredictable. As it only concerned 4-5 devices we ended up buying new ones with DEP and keep the loners as emergency backup.

[Bill_Hofius]

I have tried to set up two AppleTVs in manually in ABM and JAMF. The first took several hours and ultimately, while the device shows up in JAMF, it does not respond to any commands sent from JAMF. The second was mostly successful with far less effort. I will try this with additional AppleTVs soon, fingers crossed that this is the procedure:

1. Connect the AppleTV to the local network via Ethernet.
2. Use the Reset and Update option to erase the AppleTV and update it to the most recent version of tvOS (15.1.1. as of this writing).
3. When finished, connect the AppleTV to a Mac via Ethernet. Make sure that your Mac can still reach the Internet in this configuration. (Set WiFi as the main network connection in Network preferences and your Ethernet connection is second or third connection option.)
4. Fire up Apple Configurator 2. Go to app's main menu and select Paired Devices. If you do not see the AppleTV appear in the list, make sure that your Ethernet is connected directly to the Mac and not through a hub or docking station. If it still not there, restart the Mac.
5. If Paired Devices tells you pairing failed, try it a few more times. If unsuccessful, restart the Mac and launch AC2 again and see if the AppleTV shows up in AC2. (In my case, despite all of the "failures," the devices actually paired. After the reboot the device showed up in AC2 and I was able to continue on.)
6. In AC2, go to the Prepare menu and choose Automated Enrollment. I tried using Manual Enrollment over and over again and it kept failing. I switched to Automated Enrollment. and it worked without issue. I went through the AppleTV setup process after this and got to a setup screen stating the AppleTV was a managed device and to confirm this. I selected Manage Device and low-and-behold the AppleTV showed up in JAMF!

So far this AppleTV has been responding to all JAMF commands sent to it. Wh00t!!

NOTE: This process did not add the AppleTV to our ABM account. But that does not seem to affect device or JAMF functionality.