At the WWDC20, Apple introduced a few notable MDM changes for iOS 14. Here’s a quick recap of the most important features.
Each year when June comes along, MDM-followers can eagerly anticipate a slew of new MDM features and capabilities to iPhones and iPads. This year’s WWDC20 (Worldwide Develop Conference 2020) did not disappoint: Although the format took place virtually for the first time in its history, and most of the focus was on MacOS this time around, here are the new iOS 14 MDM changes.
iOS 14 MDM Change 1) Locations for Apps and Books
A feature that was often requested in educational and governmental institutions has now arrived to Apple Configurator (which also received a cosmetic update). When deploying new devices, admins can select their locations at the account stage. Entirely different sets of Apps and Books configured in Apple Business Manager are then displayed. This means that an intuition, for example, which may use different resources between an elementary school and a high school, can now configure devices accordingly with ease.
2) Automated Device Enrollment Skipping Keys
Automated device enrollment is an existing feature for iOS devices and lets users start their devices with a reduced number of setup-assistant windows. New skip keys have been added to iOS 14 to streamline the process further.
3) Shared iPad for Business and Temporary Sessions
Shared iPad is a great to deliver a personal experience on tablets and has been particularly useful for students. Now, the feature comes to business use cases and can deliver the same personalized experience and separated data for multiple employees. After admins set this up in Apple Business Manager, users log in with their Managed Apple ID. Azure Active Directory users can allow employees to sign in with federated authentication and the SSO extension is also supported.
Building on top of this, a new temporary session feature has also been introduced, giving businesses another way to fit iPads into the workplace. Users can sign in without needing an account. Afterwards, all of their data is automatically deleted.
4) Non-Removable iOS Apps (Supervised Devices)
Previously, iOS administrators were only able to blanket-deny users from being able to remove apps on supervised iPhones and iPads. This was a little overly restrictive and not always necessary. Now with this iOS 14 MDM change, admins individually define if each app should be removable or not, giving users more freedom to delete apps they installed themselves.
5) Time Zone Management
Here’s a feature that’s helpful for the more globally-orientated organizations out there. iOS will now allow admins to set the time zone via MDM for each device in a way that is completely independent of location services.
6) Encrypted DNS Settings
Administrators can also implement new DNS settings to increase the privacy and security between devices and DNS servers. No VPNs are needed as before.
7) Per Account VPN for iOS
Apple has added the ability to associate a number of different profile-specific payload types to VPN profiles on Contacts, Calendars and Mail domains. Replacement VPNs for these domains can be selected, just like with Per App VPN.
The profiles for iOS which support this functionality are:
| CardDAV | |
| LDAP | Google Account |
| Exchange ActiveSync | Subscribed Calendar |
Not Yet Managing iOS 14 Devices with MDM?
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