An article was added to the section Application Management.
Removal of Allocation Counts for VPP Apps by
Jordan Cardinal
Overview
Workspace ONE UEM console will be removing the option to “allocate” licenses to specific smart groups once they are synced from Apple Business Manager (formerly VPP). This change will not result in any loss of feature or functionality. The only expected impact to admins or users is that any apps with allocated values that are lower than the number of devices in its corresponding smart group will install the app if the deployment mode is set to automatically install. To avoid this, either increase the number of licenses on hold or set the deployment mode to on-demand.
Background
Since the release of Workspace ONE UEM’s integration with Apple’s Volume Purchase Program (now referred to as Apple Business Manager), admins were required to assign groups of users or devices to an application and allocate a specified number of licenses that could be consumed by that group. For example, if a group had 10 devices and 5 licenses were allocated, then only the first 5 devices to claim a license and install the app were allowed to do so. The other 5 devices were not able to install the app until more licenses were allocated or the previous 5 were revoked. This was a critical feature as it allowed admins to reserve a certain number of licenses of purchased applications (cost associated with them) to specific groups of users to guarantee their app successfully installed.
With the release of Apple Business Manager and Location Tokens, Apple has introduced the ability to allocate necessary licenses for each application to location token. And also the ability to re-allocate them from one location token to another. In an effort to simplify the management of license accounts and allocation to provide a simpler user experience, better performance, and reduced complexity, we will be removing the field to allocate licenses to specific smart groups in Workspace ONE UEM in a future release. The true source of available licenses per application will be Apple Business Manager
Additionally, with Workspace ONE UEM 9.2.0, VPP applications were provided with a new ability to dynamically assign users and devices at the same organization group. This allowed more flexibility to admins by providing a ranking order for groups and the option to toggle the deployment parameters for each group. This flex deployment innovation for purchased apps rendered the usage of allocating licenses redundant and ultimately obsolete.
This change will not result in any loss of feature functionality or end-user impact. Going forward, admins can continue to assign smart groups to purchased apps and configure their details without the unnecessary step to allocate licenses.
Impact
There is only one impact related to this change. For any app with more devices in a smart group than allocated licenses (ex: app with 200 licenses is assigned a smart group with 100 devices but only 50 are allocated), the remaining devices will install the app if deployment method is automatic.
In the example, the remaining 50 devices would install the app giving a total of 100 devices in the smart group with the app installed. Previously the first 50 devices to install the app would consume the license and the next device would not install the app until more licenses were allocated or one of the original 50 had their license revoked.
This article is intended to inform admins about an impending change being planned for 2019. More information on the new user experience without the allocation counts will be updated as we’re closer to release.
