Apple Business Manager

Apple iOS
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UPDATE: 8/06/2018 - Apple Business Manager (ABM) has been released in USA

URL to access Apple Business Manager:

Official Apple Documentation:
https://help.apple.com/businessmanager/

Instructions on updating to Apple Business Manager
not available in all countries yet

Apple Business Manager release notes:

Looks like Apple have quietly released a new beta portal “Apple Business Manager” (https://beta.business.apple.com) that will eventually succeed and merge DEP (https://deploy.apple.com) and VPP (https://vpp.itunes.apple.com/) portals.

This portal seems to bring some of the education features to enterprise and add a number of other features:

  • Managed Apple ID’s (ability to both create and manage)
  • Improved role based access to the portal
  • Multi location support
  • Error and activity logging

Portal documentation available here:

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Hi,

I’m trying to login to the service with my DEP/VPP account but I get the error that the account is not a manager account. Someone managed to create a manager account in some way?
Will DEP/VPP account become manager account when business manager will be out of beta?

Anyone knows if there is going to be a SAML integration so that I can use ADFS ( or other services) to let user have an enterprise apple id with their domain credentials?

Thank you
Giorgio

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Apple Business Manager is still in beta, you need to be invited into the beta by Apple in order to gain access.

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Apple Business Manager has been released in USA

We have tested and it is not available in New Zealand yet (unsure about state of other countries)

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Do you guys think shared device mode will extend to devices under ABM too? Besides ASM?

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Maybe in the future it’s not available currently

Apple Business Manager has been released to NZ as of today

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In Germany ABM released too, when you switch to ABM then you cant login to dep program anymore.

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Just wanted to share that something doesn’t look quite right to me with the MDM DEP protocol after the upgrade to Apple Business Manager.

When using the DEP API, it seems all DEP non-school organisation accounts previously created and now upgraded have their org_version fields set to v2 which is documented as ASM (Apple School Manager) version type.

Previously, before the upgrade, the value of that field was v1 for ADP (Deployment Program) type.

I’m curious if this is going to be updated in the upcoming iOS12 releases.

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I just heard about ABM today, and this is my first question as well re: SAML integration so we can use enterprise-class IAM solutions (like ADFS, Azure AD, Okta, OneLogin, etc.) for our administrators to be able to sign-in here and manage this platform, the same way we do with other enterprise systems (like MDM, or Salesforce, or email, etc.).
Thanks, anyone else know or hear if Apple plans to support SSO/SAML type connections with enterprise customers for ABM?

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Looking at Apple’s track record with enterprise integration I would say its rather unlikely

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In WWDC 19 Apple have announced that federated auth with Azure AD is coming to ABM

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Looks like Federated Authentication with Azure AD is now available in Apple Business Manager

Apple instructions available here: Apple Business Manager User Guide - Apple Support

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ABM now supports SCIM account provisioning with Azure AD (As of August release)

ABM Release notes: Apple Business Manager release notes - Apple Support

Microsoft documentation on SCIM setup: Tutorial: Configure Apple Business Manager for automatic user provisioning with Azure Active Directory - Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn

Apple documentation: Apple Business Manager User Guide - Apple Support