Supervised / non-supervised devices in ABM

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Created Mar ’21

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We are developing a private app. Until now we were doing Ad Hoc deployment using MDM solution to deploy the app on registered devices.

We are now investigating possibility to deploy the app as a Custom App through the Apple Business Manager. We have registered our organisation and configure our App in App Store Connect for private distribution to some specific organisation IDs.

We have currently iPads already enrolled in our MDM solution, some being owned by us and are supervised and some that we don't own and are not supervised. We are a bit confused regarding the possibility to deploy the app on all those devices using our ABM account.

Is it possible to register non supervised devices in ABM? or is it a requirement to supervise the device?
For the supervised devices that we own and which are already registered in our MDM, is it possible to make them appear in the ABM without having to re-enroll them using Apple Configurator?

Thanks for your help.

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Answer 1

Device Management Engineer OP

Apple

Mar ’21

There's two ways to add an iOS / iPadOS device to ABM. The first is at the time of purchase. Because the device is new, there's no data on the device, so it's effectively wiped. The second is after purchase using Apple Configurator 2, in which case the device must be wiped. ABM lets you do Automated Device Enrollment (formerly the Device Enrollment Program), and in that case the device must be supervised.

It would not be appropriate to supervise devices that are not in your organization. I suggest reading the Apple Business Manager Agreement for details on this.

You can also use ABM to purchase app licenses. The good news for your situation is that you do not need the devices to appear in ABM in order to assign your purchased licenses to devices. Instead that assignment is done by an MDM server.

As the developer of a custom app, you use App Store Connect to choose which organizations may obtain licenses to your app. You can read more about this process here.

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Answer 2

pr-art-ger OP

Mar ’21

Thanks for your answer.

We have found out that once the app is published to ABM, we can integrate the VPP account with the MDM solution. Once this is configured the app will be available on the MDM solution side. With this setup, there is no need to add the devices in ABM. The VPP app can then be deployed on both supervised and non-supervised devices registered in the MDM solution.

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