Manage device enrollment and the setup experience with Profile Manager
You can use Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager to assign devices to Profile Manager if they’re owned by a business or school and are purchased directly from Apple or a participating Apple Authorized Reseller or carrier. This lets you automate device enrollment, wirelessly supervise devices, and skip basic setup steps. If you haven’t already enrolled in Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager and authorized your server to manage devices, see the Apple School Manager User Guide or the Apple Business Manager User Guide.
Note: Setup Assistant on a Mac can be completed without a network connection. Profile Manager sends a notification when the Mac connects to the appropriate network. The user can decide to accept the enrollment profile or skip enrollment.
After you use Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager to authorize your server to manage devices, you can do the following:
Enable Activation Lock
Allow Activation Lock for supervised devices
Set the device name (Supervised)
Force enrollment of a device
Prevent unenrollment (Supervised)
Require user name and password to complete enrollment
Supervise a device
Configure as Shared iPad
Add the number of potential users
This number is used to create partitions on the selected iPad devices.
Note: See Shared iPad overview in Apple Platform Deployment for more information about Shared iPad.
You can also manage the setup experience by disabling specific screens. To view a full list of setup screens that can be skipped, see Manage Setup Assistant for Apple devices in Apple Platform Deployment.
Verify device placeholders
See which devices are assigned to Profile Manager from Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager.
In the Profile Manager
sidebar, click Devices.You should see device placeholders assigned to Profile Manager.
Search for specific devices using Search to locate a specific device or set of devices.
You can also create a new device group and add device placeholders to a device group. For information, see Manage device groups with Profile Manager.
Prompt a user to enroll a device
You can prompt a user to enroll a device during setup. When you select this option, you have additional options that allow more flexibility or control, depending on your user’s requirements. For example, you can force enrollment, so the user can’t advance to the next screen in Setup Assistant without enrolling the device. You can also force supervision, which allows even more configuration options within payloads.
In the Profile Manager
sidebar, click Devices or Device Groups, select the device or group you want to manage then click the Settings tab.Select Prompt User To Enroll Device, then select from among the three other options:
Don’t allow user to skip enrollment step
Supervise the device
Require user name and password to complete enrollment and assign the device to the user.
Click Save.
New devices or devices erased and ready for activation will now adhere to the options you chose during enrollment.
Manage Setup Assistant options
You can restrict which options appear when a new or newly erased device is given to a user.
In the Profile Manager
sidebar, click Devices or Device Groups.Select the device or group, then click the Settings tab.
Make sure “Prompt user to enroll device” is enabled.
Deselect which setup options you want to hide from the user, then click Save.
When a user starts up a device and it enrolls in Profile Manager, the only setup options a user will see are those you’ve selected.