Documentation for apple business manager

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Level 1

4 points

Documentation for apple business manager

Are there any documents or tutorials for using apple business manager in a "school type setting" I.e. without subs and costs. I know that apple really want us to go with jamf or another provider/VAR, but as an intermittent user I don't want to pay for a thing we may stop using for long periods of time. I want to have the power of mobile device management but for 5 to 10 devices only and only whenever a project is running, which is often infrequent. I have looked at intune, and it's a hot mess, I want low barriers. I need an app configuration backend that allows pushing app settings "easily". The devices are not owned by people, but I do want to have some control of the (2 ideally) apple ID's the devices sign into apple-cloud with, I dont want account magic. The devices are owned by an org, but advice on how to even start is only found on these 3rd party VAR websites? Short of talking directly to an apple technician is there any documentation I can go over first as to what it can and cannot do? A dearth of information is leading me to believe that "easy" hides some background info that is hidden in plain sight.

Posted on Jun 9, 2023 1:13 AM

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Answer 1

celliott147

Level 6

12,702 points

Jun 9, 2023 7:44 AM in response to Conrad_Braam

Apple Business Manager is simply a platform to manage Apple IDs, purchase app licenses, and assign devices to Mobile Device Management. Apple School Manager is similar, but for schools.

Apple offers a paid service called Apple Business Essentials for small businesses. The cost is similar to other platforms such as Jamf, Mosyle, Kandji, and JumpCloud. Most of these have educational pricing.

If you don't need over the air management (meaning you can make changes without touching the device), you may be able to use Apple Configurator 2 on macOS to create and install the profiles you want.

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Answer 2

Conrad_Braam Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 9, 2023 9:33 AM in response to celliott147

Curiously I been spammed by Kandji adverts a lot lately, was tempted to look at their setup. I just need a trial before I part with cash, which I'm sure we can find.

My use case is for a phone that is plugged into a mac-mini, so cloud felt like overkill. I did read about Apple Configurator2, but at the end of the day I'm looking for something that allows setting multiple app defaults to unique values per phone, via a script, and so I want to use something with a web-service like the above companies I guess. Which does help me work out what road to take at any rate. I'm guessing the apple business manager protocol and ways to acquire push notification tokens needed and so on are not freely published, so using a provider is preferred and hopefully easier. Cheers celliott .

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Documentation for apple business manager

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