Single App Mode/Guided Access with Questar Testing

[aaron_kelley]

So to make things short, we have been through the ringer with Jamf Support, Questar support, and using our own knowledge and hours trying to figure this out. Issue: Questar testing for students on iPad requires Autonomous Single App Mode OR guided access restrictions to be enabled. Guided access requires us to touch thousands of devices AND a passcode to be enabled, which is not ideal at all for us. So we have tried Single App mode. We enabled Single App mode with that particular app in our configuration profile. It's to my understanding that if we use Casper Focus, using the focus to pull up a single app is using single app mode, right? Because the user can't exit the app or do anything until it is removed focus from Casper.
If that is TRUE, then something is not working right. We focus the device to the Questar app, HOWEVER, we still get guided access errors. According to another discussion I read, SAM uses the same SDK as guided access...so why are we getting these errors? According to Jamf, everything is right so it's Questars issue. But according to Questar, it should be working.

I'm not sure at this point, we're fairly exhausted on the issue and are almost to the point of enabling guided access on all the iPads, but guys, this is thousands of devices we'll have to do this on.

[jared_f]

That is a very weird issue. Just confirming, are all the iPad's you are trying to lock supervised? Casper Focus, Apple Classroom, and Single App Mode require the iPad to be supervised. Also, did you make sure you have the correct bundle ID? That could be causing the issues you are seeing.

[aaron_kelley · Accepted solution]

@jared_f yes, they're all supervised and it is the correct bundle ID. So what me and my coworker just figured out is that Single App mode works when you make a dedicated configuration profile that is JUST single app mode. I'm still confused on why Casper focus isn't "up to par". Is that not using SAM, or just using something other backbone to lock into an app?

[jared_f]

@aaron.kelley I was just going to say that your original configuration is not going to lock them immediately. I was going to tell you to try that configuration. Happy you figured it out :)

[aaron_kelley]

@jared_f so would Apple classroom actually use the Single App mode feature unlike Casper Focus? We had plans to move to Classroom, but just have not been able to with issues we've had with other things that have kept us busy. The configuration profile isn't so bad, but does require us to unscope the devices from the profile after they've completed testing. Much better than manually enabling guided access, but it would have been preferred we could use Focus.

[aaron_kelley]

So I marked this solved for now. ASAM does not appear to be working, as there is not indicated "trigger" given by Questar for ASAM to work. If you have Apple Classroom, you may use ASAM since it uses that SDK. However, for users with Casper Focus, you will have to use the SAM method that I marked "solved" above. It's not as easy as using ASAM, but it's a decent resolution instead of having to use guided access.