Overview of iOS Apps for District iPads

This article is an overview of the District's current practices regarding mobile device apps for iOS devices.

Find and install managed apps using Jamf School Student

KPBSD uses a self-service, or install-on-demand, model for the vast majority of its managed apps for iOS devices. There are some circumstances in which apps might be affirmatively installed or "pushed" to iPads, but this is not the norm. In general, when you want to install a new app on your District iPad, you get it yourself, from our catalog of managed device apps.

Our Mobile Device Management (MDM) software, Jamf School, catalogs the District's licensed apps (even free, common apps), and makes them available to District iPads by means of a special MDM-installed app which proxies your iPad's relationship with the Apple App Store. Device apps that you get from this catalog are "managed", which means that licensing, updates, and required configurations are taken care of for you; we also have a stable of tools to assist you with install or version troubleshooting, device allocation, etc. And if you don't find the app you need already in the catalog, you can always request that we add it by contacting the Helpdesk.

For devices enrolled in Jamf School, the app that performs this "on-demand resources" service is called Jamf School Student.

See the separate article, Use the Jamf School Student App on Your iPad, for the mechanics of using this app.

Jamf School Student should be automatically installed on all devices, on one of the available Home screens, and should also be findable in the device's App Library. (NOTE: if you cannot find this app, but you can find an app called "Self Service", it means your device is still on the legacy MDM system. You will want to get it migrated over to Jamf School as soon as possible.)

How does a new app become available in the catalog?

You'll find that most of the free apps that have achieved widespread use in the District, are already available to all District iPads; that is what the Self-service apps collection in is all about. Sometimes, however, an app isn't in the catalog yet, or it is currently restricted to a specific cohort of devices. If you don't happen to see what you're looking for by browsing or searching in My Resources, you may just need to request that your specific device(s) get included in the scope for the app.

This is usually a simple Helpdesk request, requiring from you only the exact name of the app as it appears in the App Store, and which device(s) to include in the scope. If the app in question is a free app, an administrator simply adds it to the catalog and it will shortly appear in one or more Jamf School Student content collections. This is because we scope free apps broadly, preferably to all District devices.

For paid apps, the user's experience is exactly the same as for a free app, provided the user is on a device scoped for one of the paid app licenses. The paid app appears alongside all the free ones in My Resources, and it also may appear in one or more other content collections as well. The real difference with paid apps is that acquiring the license(s) requires a location-based purchasing process, and of course with scarce licenses we scope the paid apps as narrowly as possible. To discuss the particulars of this, please feel free to contact the Helpdesk.

Can't I just use my Apple ID to connect to the App Store directly?

The answer to this question is yes, you can, and if you know what you're doing and are willing to work with us to make sure we avoid the potential traps of doing so, there really isn't anything per se wrong with the practice. In the end, on-demand managed apps via Jamf School Student is almost always a better way to get apps for District iPads (this will quickly become obvious if you use both methods), but sometimes there are good reasons for using an Apple ID directly, and you can always contact the Helpdesk about such scenarios.

If you have an unmanaged Apple ID (most managed Apple IDs can't do this) and use it to log into iCloud and/or the App Store on a device, then you can interface with the App Store directly, using the credentials of that Apple ID, rather than proxied with the credentials of Jamf School Student. If you do that, here are some of the things you will want to keep in mind:

Do not make App Store purchases, for District apps, using an Apple ID that is not already set up as a Volume Purchase Plan account for the District. If you do, you will not be reimbursed for these purchases. (It's easier to make this mistake than you might think; please save yourself the headache!)
The number of devices you can tie to the iCloud account of an unmanaged Apple ID is not unlimited. This is not a good strategy for trying to manage apps for a cart of devices, for example--much better to use the managed app catalog to do this.
Apps that you get direct from the App Store, if they are not already defined in our catalog, may not get installed as managed apps.
Apps that you get direct from the App Store, if they are already defined in the catalog, will become managed apps.
When the time comes for you to reset/wipe/erase your device, whether to refresh it like a "re-image" for a Windows machine or to pass the iPad on to another user, you should affirmatively log out of App Store and iCloud before resetting. Please see Prepare your iPad for Device Reset in this case. This is important to avoid the device going into the condition known as Activation Lock, which can tie the device up for weeks going back and forth with Apple to establish the District's ownership of the device. (Let's just not do that, please?)