iOS 7 Update and Configurator Problems

Ha what u wrote sounds so familiar, almost to the point of dispair with these things! WIth the amount of people using this software and a company like Apple surely to god it can't be that hard for their guys to fix these bugs given the expertise they "should" have. Oh and "just wipe it and re-image" is NOT an answer!

Im sure if they had to pay the bills of the amount of wasted hours we spend trying to work round bugs with these things they would pull their finger out quicker!

I've been following this thread even though I managed to get my small cart updated - with only about 6 hours of headbanging frustration, and configurator telling me that my ipads were destroyed - before the latest update to configurator.

This program is horrible. For tech people in school districts whose professional reputations are being tarnished by seeming incompetence, and for teachers who have no real specialized knowledge and are being asked to manage ipad carts and justify the schools' spending of so much money. We teachers work 12 or more hours a day planning and delivering instruction, sourcing and adapting content, and grading or reviewing student work. We don't have an extra 2 or 3 or 4 hours a day to throw into battling buggy anti-intuitive software.

If Apple wants to market its products to schools, it needs to re-think its commitment to making them usable in schools.

Our schools paid for the product; the company needs to make that product useful.

<Email Edited By Host>

Not only is AC broken, the VPP store is now spitting out an "HTTP:/1.1 Service Unavailable" error, when trying to access account or purchase history.

I have found solutions to get configurator working properly.

1. If you restore a backup macke sure you restore a backup that was made witht he most recent iOS.

2. I have seen issues using skip in configurator

3. Make sure you have access to internet

I have over 600+ devices and I have to use configurator and supervised devices. I dont mind answering questions. Ive been through the ringer with apple.

This has not worked. Backing up a fully updated supervised iOS 7 ipad to icloud and restoring it onto a replacement results in the supervision profile disappearing and our mdm reporting that the device is unsupervised. Even if you supervise the device first, the restored backup contains no profiles and mdm profiled will not install if supervised options are contained in the profile.

Why are you restoring backups from icloud, I don't use iCloud at all for my devices and I don't recommend using icloud to restore supervised devices.

Because that is how it is done at our school. It always worked in 6. Students are required to use it to back up their supervised device. We do not have the manpower to manually back up student devices.

I make a general backup(backup of all the settings I will use on every device) of my devices based on the device type and operating system. Configurator allows for you to use several different backups. Once I have all of my devices restored I then add them to my MDM system. I only have issues with new iOS version which sometimes can be on the MDM solution or the new iOS version and my backup.

Oh well sorry, do you push profiles form icloud as well?

bleat wrote:

This has not worked. Backing up a fully updated supervised iOS 7 ipad to icloud and restoring it onto a replacement results in the supervision profile disappearing and our mdm reporting that the device is unsupervised. Even if you supervise the device first, the restored backup contains no profiles and mdm profiled will not install if supervised options are contained in the profile.

I successfully did an iCloud backup and restore of a Supervised device yesterday!

Find My iPad happened to be off, not sure how critical this is yet (would probably be critical if reimaging same iPad). This was from one iPad to a second.

Image replacement iPad in Configurator, Supervised, 'Don't Restore backup', but with an Initial WiFi profile.

Start the Setup Assistant, select 'Restore from iCloud backup'

If prompted for iTunes passwords, Skip for now

Restore commences, iPad RESTARTS to Hello screen.

IMMEDIATELY refresh in Configurator before setup assistant is completed (Supervises and reinstalls Initial WiFi profile)

VERIFY Supervision in Settings -> General -> About. If it does not say 'This iPad is supervised by *Organization Name*' then refresh in Configurator again.

Can continue with restore.

Plug back into Configurator if pushing your MDM profile and push it out new - you'll need to reenroll.

I'm still testing different scenarios as I have time, but please try it and let me know how it works.

chris

So today I had a good experience but wonder about something...

I grabbed a student device that was in iOS 6 and updated it over the air to 7. After the update and before going through the initial set up screens, I refreshed the device in the Configurator. Then I went through the set up steps. All profiles including the Supervision (now renamed Apple Trust Certificate) are on the device, Meraki is reporting it as being an ios 7 device and is reporting it as Supervised.

My question is: If students update over the air and go through the set up screens will I lose my opportunity to re-supervise these devices? We do not want hundreds of students updating their devices in school, nor do we want to have to collect them and manually update them to 7.

Has anyone been successful in taking an OTA updated device that's been through the set up and then re-supervising it?

Yes I can resupervise the device. I have tested this and it works properly. But be warned with the new security features in iOS 7. If an end user puts their apple id in the device and you attempt to erase the device you willl need their apple id. YOu have to do upgrades with apple configurator or you willl run in to an issue reprovisiong the device.

Thanks for the fast reply! We collect the IDs and passwords from students so that should be okay. We do know to turn off Find My iPad before plugging into the Configurator as well. I"m building a test device to make sure.

My goal is to let the students know that over the Thanksgiving break, they can update their devices OTA at home and then need to visit the tech office when they return to school so I can refresh them.

Thanks again. This has been an exhausting rollout to say the least.

Mdavisgtr wrote:

Yes I can resupervise the device. I have tested this and it works properly. But be warned with the new security features in iOS 7. If an end user puts their apple id in the device and you attempt to erase the device you willl need their apple id. YOu have to do upgrades with apple configurator or you willl run in to an issue reprovisiong the device.

Thankfully with a Supervised device, Activation Lock is not engaged when the end user turns on Find my iPad.

See the bottom of this article if you do not collect usernames and passwords. Once in Recovery mode you should be able to Unsupervise and Reprepare, or Refresh Supervision. I've only done it once but it seems to work as advertised.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5927

Has anyone had any joy from Apple with their proposed fix for the loss of supervision after iOS updates OTA?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5233

I have 3 cases logged for this with Apple and i've nothing back yet, wiping them and restoring backups has worked but i'm sick of doing it now, it isn't a solution, as when the next update becomes available the same happens again and it's more time wasted.

Interestingly the Apple tech i spoke to said it was a bug that users can update OTA as he thought if it was supervised it should only be able to be done via the mac (wish that was the case!).

It's crazy that if the user puts a passcode on the ipad or signs in with the own ID it affects Configurator supervising it, well hardly call it supervising atall as there seems to be less and less control with this software.

Also with the added errors importing codes it seems to be getting worse with each update, they either need to be fixing these problems or it's time to jump ship i think.