Making iPhone's supervised

[SeanMuldowney]

Hello All,

My company buy's iPhone's through AT&T and Verizon. We have registered with Verizon and apple through DEP and those phone's have come already set as supervised when shipped. We are about to do the same with the AT&T iPhone's through Apple Business Manager. But we have a few hundred AT&T iPhone's already deployed. I was wondering if anyone has come across this issue and has some say on what the best practice is to get devices already deployed to users set as supervised devices. I know from past experience making the iPhone supervised using Configurator 2 wipes the device. I have not done it thru Apple Business Manager yet. I would imagine it would wipe the device also is this the case? Is it best to have the users bring the iPhone into the office and have IS support make it supervised in house or does it go smooth enough for an end user to get their iPhone wiped remotely for the Supervised profile to install and then re-enroll into Workspace One. Any advise on how to deal with these iPhone's out in the field would be appreciated.

Thanks

Sean

[LukeDC · Accepted solution]

Hey Sean,

The process is the same. To bring them into supervised status you'll need to wipe and enroll them again. And you can't use any previous iCloud backups in the process. I have had success using the proximity restores when going from device to device.

In these cases I normally recommend you set a date going forward where all devices enrolled will be done through ABM setup. Trying to bring older devices into the fray is often chaotic and not worth the trouble. The only time it is really doable is if wiping the device is of no consequence to the use case at hand. Like Kiosks, and single use devices that have no personal data attached.

[andrewprice]

I would echo Luke here. Below are some scenarios that may assist getting the users on board though to help streamline the process for you.

-Have a handful of spare devices available as spares and perform a swap program. Bring in your old device and we'll give you a new one. Once the user returns to old device, add that into DEP and into the spare device pool.

-Device refresh. Depending on when you're are planning to next refresh devices, you could do this task on all the newly procured devices.

-Carrot for users. Provide an incentive for them to do it, maybe they get access to new apps and services.