How to manage licenses for apps purchased through Apple Business Manager
This article describes how you can manage licenses for the Apple apps that your organization has purchased through Apple Business or School Manager (integrating Apple's Volume Purchase Program also known as VPP).
Administrators can see the licenses in GoTo Resolve MDM and assign purchased licenses to users and/or devices. After licenses have been assigned, administrators can deploy purchased apps to managed iOS or macOS devices.
How to buy application licenses in Apple Business or School Manager?
- Sign in to Apple Business or School Manager using an account that has the role of Administrator or Content Manager.
- Open up from the left sidebar navigation. Search the app you wish to purchase. Assign the licenses to your GoTo Resolve MDM MDM server and specify the number of licenses that you want to purchase.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product. - Then navigate back to your GoTo Resolve MDM site. Open up the page, and use the button to retrieve the data about the purchased app licenses to your GoTo Resolve MDM site. The number of purchased licenses, per app, will soon appear in the VPP licenses column.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
How to manage license assignments for Apple Business or School Manager apps
To manage license assignments for an application, go to the page and open up the application by clicking on the arrow button on the rightmost end of the row.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
Open up the VPP version of the application by clicking on it. Notice that this page may contain multiple selections if there are multiple versions or deployment methods of the same app on your GoTo Resolve MDM site.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
Now you should be able to see and modify the default VPP license assignment setting for the application. This setting defines whether licenses are assigned manually before installation or automatically during deployment for the particular application.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
The possible values are:
Manually: Administrators need to assign licenses before installation. If a device has no valid license for the application, the deployment will fail with the error message
License for app x could not be found. Automatically to user when application is deployed:The next free license from the license pool is assigned automatically to the device's responsible person if he/she has registered to VPP.
Automatically to device when application is deployed: The next free license from the license pool is assigned automatically to the device by its serial number. This is the default setting for VPP.
Please notice, that licenses can only be assigned to devices that are running iOS 9 or later. If your devices are running iOS 7 or 8, you need to change this or assign licenses manually to users before deployment. Otherwise, application deployment will fail with reason "The iTunes Store ID of the application could not be validated."
How to manage license assignments manually
You can manage license assignments manually using the Actions > Assign VPP license and buttons that are located on the application version page. When assigning a license, the wizard will ask you to choose the user or device to whom or which the license will be assigned.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
Which devices or users a license has been assigned to?
The VPP licenses tab of the Application version page shows you the devices and users that have an assigned license. You can use the trash bin icon to remove the license assignment.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
You can also check through the VPP licenses tab of the Device page if any application licenses have been assigned to the device or its user.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
How to purchase more licenses for an app
If all application licenses have been used, administrators can start Purchase VPP licenses from the page action menu to go directly to the application page in the Apple Business or School Manager. In addition, the following notification is displayed.
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.