What to do with redeemed VPP apps/codes?

sedwards
Contributor

I work for a K-12 district and we just recently setup Casper to start managing our iOS devices.

Before Casper we had an AppleID for each school building and the users would redeem their VPP purchased apps using codes which tied those apps to those Apple IDs. I know that those apps are forever tied to those Apple IDs but is that the end of the line? Is there no way to merge those Apple ID's into the JSS so that we can manage those apps? 95% of the purchased apps we have out there in our district were redeemed with codes and if we can't manage them at all with Casper then that basically means I won't be using Casper for any type of app management at all.

5 REPLIES 5

Antoine_Moussy
New Contributor III

Try to ask Apple VPP Support to change your licences from codes to managed distribution.

CasperSally
Valued Contributor II

If you used Configurator to redeem them and can check the codes back in as unused, Apple will move them to managed distribution.

If you gave codes to users or used iTunes to redeem them, they're forever tied to that apple ID and can not be switched.

At least that's what apple has told me.

Request migration of unused codes here

sedwards
Contributor
If you used Configurator to redeem them and can check the codes back in as unused, Apple will move them to managed distribution. If you gave codes to users or used iTunes to redeem them, they're forever tied to that apple ID and can not be switched. At least that's what apple has told me. Request migration of unused codes here

Unfortunately they were all redeemed using iTunes. So those apps will never be able to be managed via JSS?

CasperSally
Valued Contributor II

@sedwards as far as i know, but you should ask Apple. They may be able to make an exception, but that wasn't the impression I got.

We used to use iTunes as well. We would redeem one code per school per app and keep the other few hundred codes for that app unredeemed (but purchased and recorded for auditing reasons).

When we flipped over to managing apps in JSS, we went through the apple KB to convert our VPP codes to managed licenses. We only got # total VPP codes purchased - 10 codes redeemed over to VPP licenses for each app (because 10 codes were redeemed across the 10 schools for each app).

For us, it wasn't a big deal to lose the 10 codes per app, especially considering it allowed us to forgo the mess that was dealing with Configurator 1.0.

bburdeaux
Contributor II

Any codes redeemed in iTunes are locked to that AppleID, and cannot be migrated. If you want to manage those apps, you will need to repurchase them as managed distribution licenses.

We started using iOS devices long before VPP and Configurator even existed, so we ran into the same hurdle a while back. It's not ideal, but there isn't a way around it.