iOS 13.4 - Shared iPad for enterprise

Apple iOS
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Apple have shipped the shared iPad functionality along side iOS 13.4 to Apple Business Manager

ABM release notes are available here:

This feature has been available in Apple School Manager for some time and has now been made available to enterprises.

Shared iPad must use managed Apple IDs created in an ABM instance, this is where federation with AAD is extremely useful as it removes the overhead of managing Apple IDs in ABM.

Apple Articles on Shared iPad

Shared iPad overview

Prepare Shared iPad

Shared iPad with Managed Apple IDs

Optimizing Apps for Shared iPad

iOS applications will need to be tested to ensure that they work in a shared iPad scenario

Enabling Shared iPad

The shared iPad has to be enabled as part of the DEP profile.

The following key governs this configuraiton

is_multi_user

boolean

If true , tells the device to configure for Shared iPad. Default is false. This key is valid only for Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager organizations using X-Server-Protocol-Version 2 and later.

Devices that do not meet the Shared iPad minimum requirements do not honor this command. With iOS devices, com.apple.mdm.per-user-connections must be added to the MDM enrollment profile’s Server Capabilities.

DEP keys are documented here:

I’ll update this article with more information once shared iPad is supported by Intune or Workspace One UEM

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@daniil_michine Looks like Intune supports shared device feature, Shared device mode for iOS devices - Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn . if you have tested, can you share more details on this.

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This seems to be a MS proprietary way of setting up a shared use iPad. I’m waiting for Apple Shared iPad functionality to make it to Intune which does not seem to be in the product as of yet.

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MS have made a video outlining both shared device modes, Shared iPads & Shared Device Mode (Starts @ 3:37)

1 Like
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Thank you @daniil_michine for the update. Will have a look in to it.