Apple Classroom iPad OS 15 troubles

[Aruky]

We’ve started seeing messages on students iPads in the classroom settings pane that „teacher and student certificates have expired“ and that classes cannot be joined. No idea where those certificates come from though. Any suggestions? 
TIA

[CSNavigateurs]

We had the same issue ... we corrected this by adding text in Description of each class causing the certificate to be refreshed and sent to each. iPad

[Aruky]

Tank you! A change in one class seems to have worked like you said! 

[seankaiser]

We are seeing the same thing, which started yesterday for us. When we look at the certificates area under Settings > General > VPN & Managed Devices > Jamf School MDM Profile, we have 3 expired certs showing up (root.edu..., leader.edu..., and member.edu...) I created a Jamf School support ticket last night about the issue and added info this morning about these expired certs. We have ~5000 classes so I'm not about to go in and adjust the description for each class to get the certificates to be refreshed/regenerated.

[CSNavigateurs]

Apple has confirmed that these certificates are under JAMF MDM control. The stand alone version of Apple Classroom sends a 1 year auth certificate is issued  when the classe is created by the teacher. JAMF has NOT responded to this issue ALL my classes now show all the iPADS offline !!!

[seankaiser]

Ben in the Jamf School support group responded to my ticket that they "made a slight change on the backend of your Jamf School instance that should resolve that error message". After doing a device refresh against all of our devices, we checked with a few teachers and all of them are reporting that Apple Classroom is now working again. Hopefully you have opened a similar support ticket and can ask them to do the same thing for you that they did for us. (Since I'm not sure what they did, I'm guessing that if you reference our ticket number 107108, they can look to see what they did.)

[Aruky]

Issue is still showing up intermittently at our school. Changing just one thing in any class, such as a description, makes it go away.  (I had an iPad showing "you need a valid education profile" and after hitting refresh /save in the classes section after altering one description of JAmF classes showed  up on said iPad almost instantaneously. But this can't be  a viable solution.

[bfrench]

We are not seeing the certificate issue - but students are randomly not connected.  I tried the tip of changing the class name.  A new EDU profile went out to the teachers iPad - but the students iPads did not receive an updated profile. Have an open ticket ...

[Aruky]

We had an open ticket, JamF made changes, pushed a new certificate or some such and problem went away for a couple of days. Showed up again today. Removing and adding a student resolved the issue again but this can’t be a permanent solution. Our usual classroom fix for students not showing up was turning bluetooth and Wi-Fi off and on again, this doesn’t work anymore. Hard reset of students’ and or teachers device sometimes still helps but all in all the system is flaky. 

[mramola]

We are experiencing this today as well.  I contacted Jamf and they are working on a resolution on the backend.  I did notice that to resolve it if the numbers are low (like one or two) I just quickly change the owner of the device to another student/teacher in that particular grade level (or however you have your devices grouped), and then back to the correct owner and it pushes out a new Education profile and that seems to resolve it.  I am thinking this is tied to the update to 15.  We had it blocked for students and teachers and just opened it up last week - now that our devices are running the update it seems to be causing the issue.  

[carmichaelcolle]

For anyone still having this issue I'll offer the workaround we implemented. Jamf support said to unassign and reassign the user, or enrol them in a new class so that their device will get a new EDU profile.
We created a smart group based on OS version 15 or higher, then created a new class manually in jamf and scoped it to the smart device group.
Now after a student (or teacher) updates their iPad, they are added to a new class and the device receives a new EDU profile. So far this appears to be working.

[Sway]

Hi,

you said "then created a new class manually in jamf and scoped it to the smart device group."

how can I scope a smart device group as a class? I can't find this option.

[CSNavigateurs]

We have over 300 classes .... can't start a procedure like that as they are in 55 schools ... and the issue comes back after a week or so ...

[BGSICTSupport]

Hi,

Has the cause of this issue now been discovered? We are seeing it on more devices as the days go by.

Is it a Jamf or Apple issue?

[Sway]

My Support said, that it should be fixed with iPadOS 15.1.

It's better but not 100% solved.

[BGSICTSupport]

Does simply updating to 15.1 resolve the issue or do the classes need re-pushing to them after they've updated?

Thanks,

[Sway]

Actually I don't know. I re-pushed them all before.

[hakimig]

Huge problem at our Schools as well. We have 7000 classes and 13000 iPads. And it all started when iOS 15 was launched. Jamf told me to uncheck Apple Education support , wait a few hours and then Re-check. It did push out new EDU profiles but... Today it started again. I'm going to assume some of the students updated to iOS 15 today and now i might have to uncheck the ED support again. But its a pain and I hope they fix this.

[christina_luis]

This is interesting, I am having similar issues with apple classroom and iOS 14.5-8 we have not migrated to 15 yet - there seems to be a new area inside of settings that is getting disabled.  Even though the classes are set up correctly in JAMF.  The solution I've come up with takes at least 1 hr per class.  I have to remove every connection - teacher iPad included. Then rebuild the class from scratch and attach the students by hand instead of using MUT.  Its a PITA.  

[joif]

We've also had trouble with Apple Classroom lately. It started with the certificate messages described in the original post, but after several rounds with support and re-pushing the certificates, trying changing class names and properties, updating the app and OS etc. etc, we were stil left with teachers reporting the students appeared as disconnected. Hard reset and/or turning airplaine mode on/off and similar measures sometimes solved the issue (just temporarily, though). 

Then I suddenly stumbled upon the WiFi setting "Private Address", and thought: "Why not try to turn that one off?".
And, wooha, suddenly I could see all the students in my test class as connected.
From Jamf School it is possible to disable "Private Address" for all by checking "Disable MAC Address Randomization" in the WiFi profile.

Just wanted to share this, if there are more of you out there like me, not being aware that this new privacy setting is incompatible with the use of Apple Classroom, even if it is not directly relevant to the certificate issue, and probably won't solve the issues if the Classroom app still shows the error message about the certificate.

[hakimig]

I have this setting off in jamf pro for Mac randomization but the issues still persist . I advised all students to update to iOS 15.1 along with teachers and so far I haven’t had any complaints . I’m hoping both teacher and student on 15.1 will fix the issue . I’ll keep you guys posted.



Gino Hakimi
Mobile Device Management
Information Technical Specialist
Easton Area School District
610-250-2400 Ext: 35042

[Sway]

Hi,

we already turned the randomization of MAC Adresse off. Otherwise the students can't connect to our wifi. So the problem still remains.

[CSNavigateurs]

We always had MacAdress randomization turned off in the prestage config because our Clearpass is programmed to send the iPad onto a public VLAN if active therefore no access to the classroom environment.  This issue appeared with iOS update 15.0x I really think it is a JAMF server issue as 10 of my schools use Classroom 3.0 (Stand alone) with NO issues….

[mramola]

This is 100% an issue with Jamf.  I submitted a help ticket to Jamf School and after waiting multiple days for a response this is what I got:

We sincerely apologize for the delayed response! The issue you are describing does appear to have impacted quite a few users and is something we are looking into.

For now the issue is that essentially there are some background certificate issues that can pop up that cause the error we see. Right now the best fix is one of these options:

- Unassign the device, and reassign it to its target user (recommended for single affected devices)
- Create a new class manually, assign all users that are affected by this issue to this class (recommended for multiple devices affected)

[christina_luis]

Hi mramola, that is similar to what I have been doing, however, sometimes you have to do it more than once, I am finding that this does not always fix the issue.  I have to sometimes do it more than once. 

[CSNavigateurs]

@mramola with 400+ classrooms in 53 different schools your temp solution is a NO GO !! 

THX plz keep us posted

[christina_luis]

Good Morning, 

We had a meeting with our apple rep earlier this week. He advised updating our ipads to 15 - I had been holding off due to the issues i've seen in this thread.  He let me know that Apple was aware of the issue and had been actively working to resolve the issue.  He reassured me several times that updating would fix the problem.  Rather than jumping and updating everyone, I've updated 1 of our classrooms and asked the teacher to try.  I will post back with my results. 

[Sway]

My reseller told me that it might not work with the update only. in some cases Jamf has to update the education profile in every Jamf instance.

[christina_luis]

So I would also need to get ahold of Jamf and have them update that profile?  Thats not something I manage. 

[CSNavigateurs]

We have been on iOS 15.1 …and nothing had changed … we are now on iOS 15.2 and still nothing has changed …… 

[Sway]

I'm still waiting for the renewal of our education profile. 

[Eggsabyte]

Come on JAMF School!  We need a better fix.

[jhayes]

Is there seriously not a real solution to this yet? I'm getting chewed on a daily basis by teachers wanting to use the technology I sold them on. Please help.

[christina_luis]

We use Jamf Pro, I've seen success by updating all of the devices in the room to the latest iOS along with the teacher device.  When we met with Apple they recommended having teacher and student devices on the same iOS.  So far this has worked.  I have updated about 5 classrooms. 

[jhayes]

Thanks for the quick reply. We have a 1:1 iPad program, high schoolers, and getting them to actually allow the iOS upgrade command to go through is like pulling teeth. Some simply won't do it. I'll try posting a school message and see how many follow through. 

[christina_luis]

I understand that.  We are 1:1 as well.  I make arrangements with the teacher and push the update with Jamf.  I have found lately though, that I either have to touch the iPads myself or have a student do so.  So I can't that it will work by just pushing the command.  If the teachers are that intent (I think it's great!) on using it enlist their help? 

[christina_luis]

I mean maybe enlist their help - sorry it didn't translate well after I read it - no way to edit. 

[jhayes]

Thanks, Christina. I appreciate your help! I will rally the forces.

[christina_luis]

You're most welcome. I hope it works!  

[hakimig]

I can confirm this works . I also had classroom teachers update along with the students to iOS 15.1 and have had no issues .



Gino Hakimi
Mobile Device Management
Information Technical Specialist
Easton Area School District
610-250-2400 Ext: 35042