Introduction

This is intended to be used by Site Administrators and staff at clients of Entity. As Apple and/or Lightspeed Systems make changes to the way this process works, we will make the requisite changes, so it may be useful to subscribe to this document.

Overview

There are two composite parts to making this process work:

1. Apple’s Volume Purchase Programme (VPP); and

2. Lightspeed’s Mobile Device Management

All steps should be followed sequentially in order to mitigate breaking the seamless working of the deployed solution. There are some key steps, which if omitted or varied, will probably require all iPads at the organisation to be physically touched.

Apple’s VPP

Log in to the VPP site available at https://volume.itunes.apple.com/nz/store using the VPP Apple ID for your organisation. This is in the form of an email address, most likely vpp@, cloud@, volume@, or appleid-main@.

If you have not already done so, it may be worthwhile allowing your web browser to save the username and password as you will need to login for every purchase you make.

1. Type in the name of your first required application into the search box, and press enter or click on search:

2. Click on the application name to go to the Purchase Details page. At this stage, if you are purchasing a free app, feel free to specify a high number for quantity - for this example we have chosen 1000, then click on the Review Order button:

3. On the Order Summary page that follows, click on the Place Order button:
   
   For paid apps, you will need to choose ‘Managed Distribution’ as follows:
   

4. Next, you will need to re-enter your VPP Apple ID and password:
   

5. At this point you will be presented with a page that says that your order is complete:
   
   To simplify the process for the next phase, go to your address bar and copy the last field at the end of the URL (this is the application ID). It may be useful to paste this information into a spreadsheet and continue with any remaining apps you may need to deploy:
   

Lightspeed

1. Log in to the lightspeed site available at https://launch.lightspeedsystems.com/users/sign_in  using your admin account (this would have been created during lightspeed setup):

   
   
   

2. Click on Mobile Manager, this will open a new tab in your browser.

   

3. Click the square within a square button to open the navigation menu for the group you wish to install the application to.

   

4. Navigate through the names on the menu by clicking on them until you find the group you wish to install the applications to. Once you can see the group you wish to install to click on the arrow to go to that group.

   
   

 Please note that the group you choose to install an app to will also install that app to all groups under it.

5. Click on the ‘Apps’ icon in the sidebar, this will take you to the page for installing applications.

   
   

6. Click on the Install App icon and select the installation type. Select Managed Distribution from the dropdown and then select Apple VPP from the second menu. It should look something like this:

   
   

7. Tick the box next to each of the applications in the list that you wish to install to the devices in the group you are currently in.  Now click Install Selected Apps. This will open a new prompt asking if you wish to force install or update the application. You can leave these unchecked and click install.

Now you have successfully installed the applications from your VPP account to your iPads. Simply make sure that the iPads are on and connected to a wifi network and they will begin downloading and installing the applications. No more need to sign into an apple id on the devices.

Conclusion

This document should cover all the points needed to silently install iOS apps using Apple's Volume Purchase Programme and Lightspeed on any managed iOS devices. 

The steps above are simple in isolation, but there are some salient points in this document that need to be followed precisely to ensure your fleet of iPads does not need to be retouched. 

If there are any errors, omissions or points of clarity needed to make this document more complete, please do not hesitate to contact your normal service consultant.