App Approval Process

[Marcia]

We are trying to modify our App Approval Process.  It is hard to pick out which apps are really good and useful for the students or staff.  We currently seem to let everything be approved and are pushing just over 700 iOS apps.  What are some of the guidelines you use. What are some of your favorite apps?

[AJPinto]

For iOS we pretty much only deploy Microsoft Apps out to all devices, and business apps (like salesforce) to departments that need them. Granted we are corp and not edu.

MacOS has a lot more custom apps than AppStore Apps.

To onboard an app it must be requested through a portal. It goes through several review steps including Security Architecture which ensures the application is not opening up any unnecessary risk as well as scanning the code base. Apps also go though infrastructure architecture (me) to ensure there are not any compatibility issues, and there is not a tool without our environment that already does the same thing. Legal also reviews EULA's, as well as governance and several other areas checking their things. Lots of steps to get something approved, but we have a very small risk appetite due to being a financial organization.

[ktrojano]

In our district, we have a form teachers fill out to request an app be added to Self Service. Then our Instructional Tech Coordinators review the requests. They look at the instructional value and methodology of the app, the terms of use, student privacy, and what data is collected. They also determine if the app requires parent permission before use. They go through this process 3-4 times a year at specified times. We revised our previous process which was much like yours a few years ago to this new process. We also drastically reduced the number of apps in Self Service at that time as well.   

[Marcia]

We have a form as well.  We do have a process - but I currently have people who hand out apps like Oprah and I'm trying to create more guidelines for them. Thanks!

[agungsujiwo]

you can try Jamf Setup, to install a group of Apps (teacher and staff groups),
favorite Google Workspace apps, all cloud based so no need to backup.

[jbisgett]

I would recommend taking a look at: https://www.1edtech.org/program/trustedapps

This helped my previous workplace streamline a lot of our process and also took the onus off of the instructional coordinators having to vet every app.