Jamf School local account management

[rakhulwen]

Hello y'all.

I was just recently hired by a small (less than 500 k-12) students to manage their new 1:1 technology program. They had purchased 255 MacBooks, 180 iPads, and 60 Apple TVs. They also purchased Jamf School "at the recommendation of Apple."

We finished deploying devices to students and teachers today, and after the 7th phone call about a student forgetting their local account password, I realized that Jamf School was extremely limited in comparison to Jamf Pro with regards to MacBooks.

So, my questions.

1: Is it possible to upgrade from jamf School to Jamf Pro without re-enrolling devices?

2: If not, is there a 3rd party software we can deploy on top of Jamf School that will allow us to manage user accounts?

I'm the first IT staff to be hired, so I tried explaining the limitations to the superintendent, and they are open to discussions about upgrading should it be available. I'm just realizing how insecure and unmanageable our MacBooks are at this point.

[jacobmayle]

Hello, 

I work for a small school as well (750 MacBooks, 550 iPads, 70 Apple TVs) and we use JAMF Pro to manage all our devices. We really like the functionality that we get, we looked at moving down to JAMF School but decided that we wanted the additional features. We also just implemented JAMF Connect this year to allow the students to sign in to their MacBooks with their school issued gmail accounts. This is working very well, it keeps the local password in sync with the google password. 

I have seen a few issues with out JAMF Connect where the student gets locked out after entering the wrong password a few too many times, but we can hop on the admin account and unlock it. 

Overall I have been pretty happy with JAMF Connect, its been a bit of an adjustment for some students but I think that the more they use it they won't even notice it.