Creating a custom attribute to use with Apple School Manager

This step is optional, as you can create the custom attribute when you turn on the Apple Education feature, as described in Enabling Apple Education in Ivanti EPMM . If you prefer to create your own custom attribute when enabling Apple Education, skip this procedure and continue on to Enabling Apple Education in Ivanti EPMM .

Apple Education requires the creation of custom attributes so that devices can be assigned to either an individual (teacher or student) or to a device cart. Each device can be either a teacher device, student device, or multi-user student device (shared iPad.) These education roles are determined by the values entered into the custom attributes on a device.

You can have a total of 300 custom attributes in Ivanti EPMM.

When using Apple Education, there are two custom attributes used to determine the above education roles. The first custom attribute is used to link a device to an individual. These devices are called 1:1 (one to one) devices and are linked via the Managed Apple ID as shown in Apple School Manager and in the Apple Education “Classes” tab. The second custom attribute is optional and is only used if you want to enable the use of Shared iPad devices. This custom attribute is the device cart name and it is what is used to link the device to the device cart.

You can setup these custom attributes prior to enabling Apple Education in Ivanti EPMM in order to help organize existing teacher / student 1:1 devices. Devices in device carts will need to be wiped and restarted after enabling Apple Education in Ivanti EPMM. Once that is done, you can set up the device carts and Multi-user Device Enrollment Profiles.

It is not advisable to have a custom attribute value that has a Managed Apple ID associated to both a teacher and a student. It will result in the device being associated to an Apple Education role of Teacher. If Ivanti EPMM has insufficient data to associate a device with a relevant class, then the Apple Education role for that device is None.

Devices with an Apple Education role of None will not receive a valid Apple Education role, which precludes these devices from participating in Classroom app activities.

Before you begin 

Complete the procedure in Adding your enrolled devices to your MDM server.

Procedure