Managed Apple IDs

Apple IDs has always been the central piece of Apple ecosystem - linked to an iTunes account, it was the only way to get software licenses until VPP device based licenses have been added. It was becoming more and more complicated for Education Organization to maintain, even after Apple introduced education / under-age Apple ids.

This is why Apple introduced, in conjunction with Apple School Manager, "Managed Apple Ids" - those Apple Ids behave like any other, but instead of being "owned" by a user, they are "managed" by an education organization.

Silent invite

It is now possible to assign licenses to Managed Apple IDs, via VPP Users. While most of the apps now support Device Based assignment, a few apps still require user based licenses, and books are still using User Based Licenses. On this level, Managed Apple IDs are like normal Apple IDs: they have to be associated to a VPP user for the corresponding VPP token so the token organization can assign licenses to the Apple ID.

To improve customers workflow, Apple introduced the ability for MDMs to automatically and silently link a VPP user and a Managed Apple IDs. This makes organization life easier as they don't have to rely on human interaction to link their Apple ID to your VPP organization.

With the release of FileWave 12.7 FileWave have implemented this feature for 1:1 devices. Whenever a change occurs in the "Classroom" panel, FileWave will link the VPP user to the device;

When this happens a VPP user will be associated to the user Managed Apple ID - and therefore user based licenses, including those for books, can be deployed, without the need of manually joining the organization. You will no longer need to accept the Apple terms and conditions on each device you are managing.

How to implement Managed Apple IDs with user assignment with FileWave

The user will need to sign in to the App store on their device with their managed Apple ID. Without this there is no way to know what managed Apple ID should be on which device. To do this the user will need to go to Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> Sign in with the account. If you are already signing the devices in with the managed Apple ID for iCloud you still will need to sign them in to the iTunes App store settings on the device.

One tip with this setup would be to sign in with the Managed Apple ID on the device during DEP setup on the individual devices. This would allow you to skip a step of signing the devices in after Enrollment is finished. So for this you would want to Enable Apple ID setup in your DEP profile so that this is not skipped during initial activation.