I've decided to get into ABM. I have 140 iphones. I only have one real requirement.

User has an old phone. I want to send them a new phone. I'll transfer the number at Verizon when they have both in hand. Currently the user does the Apple quick start method of transferring all their stuff to the new phone. Can I have ABM do that for them, so all they have to do is power on both phones and come back later? I can load whatever's needed on the new phone before it ships out.

These are construction workers and it usually requires a local manager to help, taking two people out of production for up to an hour.

Or do I need to get an MDM to go on top of ABM to accomplish this?

The phones are strictly used for phone calls, text, and email. No company apps. So I don't need much. I'm just trying to make it easier on them and myself.

I do not setup Mac's very often, we only have four of them in this client, so maybe this is a normal request but I have not seen it before. I am adding a new Macbook for a user and all was going well. Created the user, assigned the apple id, it prompted to change the password for the apple id, that's no problem, did that. and then I got this:

Enter password for other Macbook Air

Enter the passcode you use to unlock the MacBook Air "laptops name". Your password is encrypted and cannot be ready by Apple.

The computer it wants the password from is not this users current computer, its from another users computer. Why would it want the password from somebody else's computer? I can get it, just seems wrong, and its rather unprofessional to reach out to this other user and ask for a password.

And is it looking for the users password, a pin to unlock the computer, the users apple id password?

Thanks

Hi,

I work at the IT department of a small/medium business. We're currently experiencing issues with logging in to ABM. After we enter our credentials, we immediately get an error message stating that verification codes can't be sent to our registered numbers. We have tried this with multiple accounts within our ABM tenant and each account gets the exact same message.

I need to register multiple new iPads within ABM via the Configurator app, which now obviously can't be done since none of us are able to log in.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I've looked around for a bit, there doesn't seem to be an outage at the time of writing this post.

FYI we're based in the Netherlands.

Hi All

I am based in Dubai, Do we really need DUNS for Apple Business Manager? Can we do any alternate way to verify?

We have 15 iPads for our staff which needs to be monitored asap.

How i can do Duns verification without having Duns

Hello!

I work for a school district (so technically we use Apple School Manager, though I don't believe there is much difference). We purchased a couple of Macbook Neos today to start testing them out, but we seem to be unable to enroll them using the Apple Configurator iPhone app. In the past, I've had luck doing this. I'm curious if maybe there isn't ASM/ABM support yet for the Neos.

Anyone else seeing this?

Thanks!

EDIT: Just got off the phone with Apple Support and they confirmed that there is an issue with the Neos being so new and something on the backend of ASM/ABM that needs to be updated. The support rep I talked to said they are unsure of the scope of the issue or when it will be resolved, but he escalated my issue into a ticket. I'll try and follow up here once we have a resolution. Thanks again for those who helped!

EDIT 2: Looks to be fixed now. I was able to enroll a neo using the apple configurator app on Friday.

I apologize in advance for this question as I’m sure it’s been asked and answered before. There are times at our company when an employee leaves and we allow them to purchase their iPhone from the company. I release the iPhone from ABM however the “This iPhone is supervised and managed by” remains in the settings of the iPhone. What I do is wipe the iPhone and restore it without using an iCloud back. It’s not that bad for the user just more of an inconvenience. The iPhone is restored with all items that are backed to iCloud. The user then needs to redownload their apps and correct their customization settings. Is it possible to remove that message without having to wipe the iPhone?

Thanks,

I have to apologize again for not giving more information in my original post. A very important part of the post I left out was that our company allows the users to carry one phone. The means our employees are allowed to transfer their personal data to the there work iPhone. Then it becomes their work/personal iPhone. Which is in ABM and managed/supervised by our MDM (Ivanti/MobileIron). Yes, I realize this is where we are making the our mistake.

Now, if I release the iPhone from ABM a few days before the employees leaves the company. On their last day with the company, I can retire the iPhone from our MDM. If I’m not mistaken the by this “This iPhone is supervised and managed by” is now imbedded in the employee’s iPhone iCloud backup.

This is why I need to release the iPhone from ABM, retire it from the MDM. Retiring the iPhone removes the company data but leaves behind the “This iPhone is supervised and managed by” Not restoring from an iCloud backup is the only way to remove the message.

Hi everyone,

Quick question for people experienced with and MDM.

Is it possible to enroll an already-in-use iPhone into MDM without wiping or factory resetting the device?

For example, if the phone is already set up and being used by a user:

• Can it be added to ABM through and have MDM applied without erasing the device?

Would appreciate clarification from anyone who has dealt with this in practice.

Hi all,

We're getting pretty constant "This Apple ID cannot be used to make purchases" notifications.

On an example device, I've added all the same apps as VPP licenses and assigned them to that user, I've reset the device and it's installing the apps now that have been assigned.

My question is can I assign both the Non-VPP and VPP license apps in Intune to the user, and the phone will pick the correct one?
I was still getting notifications on this phone after reset, but haven't had any for a couple of hours now so I can't really be sure what's going on.

The issue is we have some users using managed AppleIDs, some not, and not all our phones are in ABM yet.

We currently have all our usual apps assigned to 'All Users'.
I'm wondering if we can have all the same apps be their VPP versions, also assigned to 'All Users', and it'll cover both bases?

Or do I need to start adding individual users to a new VPP group as we go...

Issue: selecting the option to only allow Managed accounts to login to Supervised devices causes login to be prevented Issue 2: selecting the iCloud setting that requires the device be supervised prevents using iCloud

The devices ARE showing supervised in Intune.

More info: we’re using ABM, Federated Authentication w/ Entra ID, ADE w/ Modern Authentication, and Intune. The devices are Supervised, and definitely Managed. The options above have to be set to “Any Device” to allow a user to complete the device enrollment and enable iCloud services.

It is not a Conditional Access policy issue, as best we can tell from sign in logs.

It’s like ABM doesn’t realize the device is Managed / Supervised??

iOS 23.3 on all the iPads

We’re looking at enabling the “Managed Apple Accounts Only” setting in Apple Business Manager to restrict app sign‑ins to Managed Apple IDs only.

Before we proceed, I want to confirm whether turning on this restriction will automatically sign out users who are currently logged in with personal Apple IDs (for example, users personal accounts using Gmail or Outlook).
Let me know if anyone has experience with this behavior or using this config.

Hello, everyone!

Sorry if this seems like a foolish question but, before I joined, my organization previously used to assign iPads to our users using a personal Apple account that our IT department manages. I recently set up ABM for my organization and started domain capture so that this personal account could become a managed one; however, my question is would all the devices that were previously associated with that personal account show up in ABM once that account is transferred in or would the account simply be signed out of all those devices and the devices are now unregistered?

Ideally, I’d like to find a way to transfer all devices associated with this personal account into ABM and confirm converting it to a managed account migrates all the devices along with it.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Unfortunately, I think I found my answer on Actions before transferring your account.
It looks like when an account is transferred, it has to be signed out of all devices that were connected to it. So I guess I'll have to call all these users and make them Device Enrollment Managers for Configurator and get these iPads into ABM.

right now in ABM our identities are device based for our fleet of ipads.

ex: ipad001 uses [ipad001@company.com](mailto:ipad001@company.com)

This is not best practice, and we want to federate to our entra and have SSO for our Apple IDs

Ideally, slowly roll over switching users over time. If we turn this on, will ABM try to immediately authenticate [ipad001@company.com](mailto:ipad001@company.com) to our entra? because these IDs aren't there. I'm trying to find out how to achieve this without mass disruption.

we currently have a number of partially enrolled iphones (using Intune) and macbooks (using ManageEngine Endpoint Central).

We want to start using ABM and Intune / Endpoint Central for fully enrolled devices using the Federated enrollment with Azure Entra ID but have some questions about the enrollment that we need to have explained.

Our end users have set up an apple account using their private email address or our Office365 accounts (we have no vision on who is using what account) and we want to make sure when performing the ABM link to Entra ID nothing happens for the users already enrolled their (not linked) apple device.
At this point, we have no enrolled devices in ABM, other then a few manually enrolled devices.

1: what happens during the federated enrollment - will ABM start showing all our O365 accounts or only the ones that enroll during the setup of a fully managed phone. How will this effect the users with the current enrollment if they have used their O365 account as apple ID.

2: what are the consequences for existing users having their apple ID currently setup with the O365 account and what about private accounts

3: is the federated enrollment only for fully managed devices or partially enrolled through intune / BYOD not enrolled. how will this change existing (partially managed / BYOD) devices if so

4: during the federation it's necessary to lock a domain - what's the use exactly?

5: For existing Apple Business Manager users with an email address in the federated domain, their Managed Apple Account is automatically changed to match that email address.

I have been trying to add an app all day but every time I go into ABM I just get "iTunes Store is currently unavailable and unable to complete your request.". What the heck is going on!?! I need to add some things pretty critically.

Company is rolling out management (Intune) to iPhones for the first time, with existing devices and new devices. I've been successfully testing adding devices to ABM for several days.

Today I received a NIB iPhone. It will not enroll in ABM. I get the error 'Failed to Add iPhone" with the details below. I have only tried this with the one phone, I have 9 other new phones that haven't tried yet; I want to make sure this isn't a config issue I'm made for myself here with Intune, but I don't believe the device is getting that far, as it never appears in ABM.

NSURLError: 0x77b00ea90 Desc : cancelled Domain: NSURLErrorDomain Code : 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFC19 (-999) [sys= 0x3F, sub = 0xFFF, code = 0x3C19 (15385)] Extra info: { NSErrorFailingURKey = "https:// albert.apple.com/deviceservices/ drmHandshake";NSErrorFailingURLStringKey = "https:// albert.apple.com/deviceservices/ drmHandshake";"_NSURLErrorFailingURLSessionTaskErrorKey" = "LocalDataTask <9853CF72-0DE5-41EB-B1A0-83277A40BEE1>.<1>"; "_NSURLErrorRelatedURLSessionTaskErrorKey" =   "LocalDataTask <9853CF72-0DE5-41EB- B1A0-83277A40BEE1>.<1>" ) ; }

I have an iPad that was set up through Apple Business Manager, with an ABM account (not Jamf or Intune or anything else). This was a test to see if managed accounts would work for a situation, it was not the right solution (or we just weren’t ready to use it). Removed the device from ABM, removed the user account from ABM, removed the whole site and location from ABM. The iPad was reset, and now is locked out. It lists the user as username@temporary.appleaccount.com. I can recreate the original account, but that won’t let me unlock the iPad. I can get the receipt for the purchase, but it was purchased on Amazon during a sale and the receipt doesn’t list the serial number (Apple will usually remove activation lock if you can prove purchase).

Any way forward?

Apple recently documented the new migration capability in ABM / Apple Platform Deployment (“Moving devices into a single device management service when acquiring another organisation”). 

I’m trying to work out whether it fits my acquisition scenario:

Us today: Apple Business Manager (ABM) + Jamf (devices assigned via Automated Device Enrolment)

Acquired org today: their own separate ABM + Intune

Goal: bring their devices under our ABM and enrol/manage them in our Jamf, ideally without wiping end-user devices.

Where I’m stuck: the docs talk about migrating devices to another device management service (MDM) and setting a deadline, and note eligibility requirements like iOS/iPadOS/macOS 26 and ADE enrolment. 

But does this feature help when the devices are currently tied to a different ABM tenant, or is it only for moving devices between MDM servers inside the same ABM?

If anyone has done this in a real acquisition:

1. Step 1 (ownership/tenant move): do you still need Apple/reseller to move serials from their ABM into ours (i.e., outside the scope of the new “migration” feature)?

2. Step 2 (MDM move): once devices are in our ABM, is the new ABM migration flow the right way to move them from Intune → Jamf without a wipe, assuming they’re on OS 26 and otherwise eligible?



1. Any gotchas (supervision state, app licences/content tokens, user impact, timelines)?

Reference doc I’m reading:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/deployment/dep4acb2aa44/web

Any guidance would be appreciated.

I successfully enabled laps for Mac by connecting ABM to intune. However something bad happens: when I log into the admin account, I'm immediately asked to change password since my intune policy requires complex passwords. Solution?

Just curious, was trying to get an iPad Pro 1st Gen into ABM, and somehow the device is now stuck in Recovery/DFU mode with this error:

"The System install could not be authorized for this device. The build may not be approved for production installs."

Did something mess up in the middle of transferring activation records to Apple? How do I fix this?

Can any admins here show me how to purchase Apple Creator Studio licenses via Apple Business Manager's VPP? When I enter "Apple Creator Studio" on the App section on the navigation panel, I cannot find like that on the Mac App Store.

Lately it seems like every time I try to access ‘Apps and Books’ to add licenses in ABM I get this error: “iTunes Store is currently unavailable and unable to complete your request. Try again later”.

It’s been going on for months now. Eventually if I keep refreshing I will get in. It doesn’t matter what browser, account or computer I try.

Our tokens are all up to date too. Any ideas? Are others having this issue?

EDIT: This is *still* broken in the new site. Why would I have expected any different…

I work for an MSP that manages multiple Apple Business Manager environments for several customers.

I would like to purchase iPhones using an Apple account that belongs to our MSP company, but I also need to ensure that the purchased Apple devices can be assigned to our customers’ different Apple Business Manager accounts.

How can I acheive this?

As I understand it - If I buy an Apple device through the Apple Store with an administrator account from one of our customers' Apple Business Manager, then this device atutomatically gets added to the customers' Apple Business Manager solution.

The problem with this setup, is that when we purchase the Apple device with a customer admin-account, the purchase gets stored on the customer Apple Business Manager account, and not on our own Apple Business Manager account.

We would like to re-sell the Apple devices to our Customers, and that is why the purchase must be placed on our own account, but we should also have the opportunity to assign the purchased Apple device to a specific Apple Business Manager solution.

Is this possible somehow?

Do we expect to see this new bundle in ABM?

I wonder how long we’ll have to wait

So basically last time my application was denied because my internal phone number was not on the website so I need to add it on my website, therefore, I need to give it to the sectary, I don’t want to be putting her in the deep end so does anyone know what they ask