Leasing new iPad minis using DEP and Meraki

Last term we had 100 iPads come off lease and we replaced them with 150 iPad minis.  I posted about the decision to switch to minis here.  Things did not go as smoothly as they could have so here's a few tips if you're about to do something similar:

• If devices are coming off lease, make sure you give yourself enough time to choose what you are replacing them with and to get the finances signed off.
• Give teachers enough time to get all their photos/videos off their current devices.
• If you are wiping your leased iPads to return them or sell them DO NOT USE MERAKI!!!!! Within Meraki's client screen there is an "erase device" button but this does not work properly if you are using "Find my iPad".  It looks like it has erased the device but it won't let you set it up as new.  Instead it demands the Apple ID password for the device.  We sold 40 of our 100 iPads to staff, and fortunately gave out about ten early because those staff came back and told us about the problem.  We then had to set up all 100 iPads again, read the tiny serial numbers at the back of the iPad so we could work out which password went with which device, log on to iCloud, turn off 'Find my iPad' and then log out again.  We were on a tight deadline to return the devices and this added hours to the process.
• Make sure your supplier adds your new devices' serial numbers to DEP asap as they can take 24 hours to appear (in our case we had a hiccup that delayed deployment by a week.  This is the email you don't want to receive "The DEP transaction is suspended with Apple right now as there was an issue with it. It has needed to be pushed through manually at Apple’s end".  I never really found out what the "issue" was, only that the head of Apple NZ got involved and then it went up the chain in the U.S. too.  I'm hoping that this was just teething issues, as we were the first of our supplier's clients to use DEP).

Once our iPads finally appeared on DEP it was very simple to set up the devices wirelessly and a nice improvement over Configurator.  The only drawback is that we can no longer assign a name to the lock screen, instead I've advised teachers to add different wallpapers to each of their devices.  We also had to manually add the name of the device after set-up.

I've always found Meraki fiddly when installing a lot of apps on a device.  Our senior school's devices have 49 apps on them and they didn't all go through immediately.  However we seem to have got off lightly because the last 16 devices had certain apps that would not go through at all.  They were stuck 'waiting' or loading and it was very frustrating.  I ended up taking them home as our IT guru seems to think the problem lies with our connection with N4L (he's doing some techie things to sort that out).  The apps did load up fine at home but it wasn't what I had planned for my evenings!

So that was what I got up to in the latter part of Term 2.  Fortunately I had an assistant to help with the fiddly app-loading process.  We also leased 24 new Apple TVs so they needed to be swapped over as well.  While I was installing them I took the opportunity to enable restrictions so that I could hide the movies from the main menu.  This removes the cringe factor of seeing "Sex Tape" or "50 Shades of Grey" advertised!

Term 3 sees us introduce optional BYOD (iPads) to our Year 5 & 6 students.  I'm sure this will be a learning process as well but I am keen to get started.

Switching to iPad Minis

View image | gettyimages.com

It has been almost three years since we leased 100 iPads for our school.  Confession time, back then I thought it would have made more sense financially for us to purchase the iPads.  But the thing about technology, you just can't predict where it's going to go, and our wise principal knew what he was doing.

Things have changed a lot since 2012.  We have moved from a very decentralised way of iPad management to using Configurator and Meraki and specifying which apps are on the iPads (here's my post about that).  We now have 152 devices, 42 of which are iPad minis.  When I investigated the cost of leasing iPad minis I found that leasing six of them was equivalent to leasing four iPads.  I was given permission to trial a set and the feedback I got was that the smaller size was not an issue for the students, but the big benefit was the teachers having enough devices for their groups.  Subsequently all of our new devices have been iPad minis and they have been well-received by the team leaders who have been lucky enough to get them.

When the time came to decide what to replace our old iPads with, my recommendation was to bring in iPad minis.  This was endorsed by our team leaders.  Our supplier offered us a choice of the mini Basic (the original iPad mini), the mini Retina (iPad mini 2) or the iPad mini 3.  Our policy has always been to purchase the latest models, however I had read a number of articles, including this one, that said there were no real benefits to upgrading to the mini 3.  It was decided to go with the iPad mini 2, and on Friday we confirmed our lease for 150 of them.  The cost of the lease is actually less than what we paid to lease the 100 iPads three years ago!

We now have the interesting prospect of setting up 150 iPad minis and replacing the old iPads in a very short space of time (I underestimated how long the negotiating and approval process would take).  We do have a couple of things in our favour.  Firstly, Apple's Device Enrollment Program (DEP) has just arrived in New Zealand and should make set up easier and do away with having to use Configurator (although even our I.T. guru has not actually used it before, because it is so new).  Secondly, we sold about 40 of the iPads to our staff so can leave those until after we have returned the other 60.

It is going to be a very busy time about 5-10 working days from now (the time it will take to get the minis from our supplier).  Once I recover I will post about the (hopefully smooth!) process of using DEP and Meraki to set things up.