Support for Apple School Manager Apps & Books

[JayDuff]

I got an email last night, from Apple, regarding a replacement for the Volume Purchasing Program, Apple School Manager Apps & Books. It is fully described at this HT.

We have 2 VPP tokens, and a couple of apps that got licenses on each token - one of those apps is paid. That makes distributing the paid licenses a little complicated. Well, one of the features of ASMA&B sounds like something that could help us unify into a single account.

The Apple article states that our MDM vendor must support the new functionality, so my question is: Does Jamf Pro support ASMA&B?

[tim_lane]

Hey Jay,

I've just spoken to JAMF on this and as it's something that is very new, they'll have more information in the coming weeks ahead.

[pueo]

Hello

Was there any follow up to this post?

P.

[JayDuff]

I haven't heard anything, but we are still running 9.101, so I'm not expecting to use it yet.

[pueo]

Thank you for the speedy response Jay. We are using 10.x. I just want to move forward with utilizing Apple School Manager more as we do not use ASM for classes etc..only for DEP.

[JayDuff]

This post was specifically about Apps & Books. We don't use that yet. That being said, I have to tell you - ASM works GREAT for classroom and DEP - even with 9.101! We don't use the PowerSchool plugin - we have a custom-built PHP script, that uses ODBC to talk to PowerSchool, and uploads a CSV to Apple via SFTP. I looked at the plug-in, and it might work, but we have some fields in Classroom that the plug-in doesn't grab, so we are keeping our custom import script.

[thejenbot]

I believe they do. I have seen hundreds of lines of INFO in my logs (jssurl/logging.html) regarding licenses being transferred from one token to another, which we've verified is actually not happening. Support has told me that this process is really new and that the garbage I'm seeing consistently in our logs isn't anything I need to worry about (because it's not WARN or ERROR), but I'm not so sure. I haven't started to use this new portal, instead continuing to purchase from the legacy site (volume.itunes.apple.com). We're cloud hosted and running 10.1.1-t1513360285; hopefully the logs clear up, at which point I would be more comfortable moving forward.

[MattAebly]

Hey Everyone,

I just want to post on here that when looking to transition to the new Apps and Books, please be sure to work closely with Apple when transitioning your VPP tokens to location tokens. There are some stipulations with how that is done and they would be the best resource to make sure the transition is smooth which leads to a smooth transition on the Jamf Pro side.

Definitely some neat stuff that I see getting more traction in the summer time!

Matt

[JayDuff]

I'm at the Apple Tech Update seminar right now.

BIG CAVEAT! If you use more than one VPP account. If you try to merge more than one VPP account into one location in ASM, only UNASSIGNED licenses will transfer. So, you need to revoke the licenses on the second VPP Token before you try to merge it, or you will lose the licenses that have been assigned.

Also, the Apple guy (not a Jamf guy) said the MDM needs to know how to use the new tokens, and that the big vendors (he mentioned Jamf by name) know how to do it. That being said, he didn't say what VERSION of Jamf knows how to use them.

[MattAebly · Accepted solution]

Hey Jay,

Any of our versions would be able to use the Apps and Books features, but our 10.1 + versions will handle it the best. You may see some odd behaviors if using it on versions below 10.1

http://docs.jamf.com/10.1.0/jamf-pro/release-notes/What's_New.html

Matt

[JoshRouthier]

I just recently went through upgrading our VPP Tokens (we have 2 which both have paid apps on them) to the Apps and Books tokens, and consolidating the apps onto 1 token. It is EXTREMELY important that when you are migrating your VPP Tokens that when you migrate them, each token migrates to its own location in ASM (as Jay pointed out, only unassigned apps will migrate if this is done). I had the unfortunate luck of migrating one of our VPP tokens with paid apps on it to the same location as a previously migrated token. JAMF support was super helpful in helping me get everything sorted out and none of my users were any wiser as to what I did on the backend.

[cparets]

ASM Apps and Books seems like the only way to push out books with managed Apple IDs so I think we will need to upgrade. If we have only one VPP token, it seems like the upgrade should go smoothly into one new location token and we wouldn't need to revoke any licenses before doing the upgrade. Does that sound correct to you guys?

[cparets]

I was incorrect about this. You still have to push it out to the user using JAMF Pro, even though the managed Apple ID is in ASM. I thought maybe they made it easier, but they didn't. For now, not seeing a benefit for us to switch to Apps and Books in ASM.

[Sandy]

The biggest advantage of using ASM is that you can easily move licenses between tokens. This potentially could save money by moving apps to the token where they are needed.
Also if apps are over purchased/acquired or no longer wanted, you can transfer those licenses to a token that is in ASM but not in the JSS.
I have moved many thousands of app licenses out of my JSS using this method.
My migration with 10 tokens all with scoped apps went quite smoothly with the exception of my Special Programs token which required help from Apple and Jamf to straighten out. There was definitely a learning curve at the beginning of these upgrades!
As a manager, being able to look at ALL the locations and ALL the licenses for any app while logged in as me is a HUGE time saver.

[JenT]

Call me a procrastinator, but we still haven't upgraded our VPP accounts yet to ASM. I'm a little worried from what I've read.

My organization has 4 different VPP accounts, all which come through different funding streams. They need to be migrated to ASM as separate locations from what I understand in order to move over unassigned licenses, correct?

My question is, what about the ASSIGNED LICENSES for each of those VPP accounts that are currently being utilized in the MDM? Many of assigned to users & devices.

[waltnerc]

I'm here reading this thread because yesterday I tried adding additional licenses via VPP Education and was rejected. Its rubber hits the road time. Is jamf support for this migration ready or not? If so, point me to some jamf related instructions. Until I do it, I cannot add/buy new software!

[dlondon]

Hi @waltnerc I'm not sure if the migration window from vpp to Apple School Manager is over but your results imply that. These are Apple products that integrate with Jamf so you should be contacting Apple about what you need to do. I've been down this path. I found people very helpful at Apple and they got me pointed in the right direction. I had one VPP account and another that I thought was VPP but wasn't. The VPP account I was able to migrate into the ASM and so not lose the licenses, the other one will forever sit outside.