[Mynet85]

Good evening Everyone,

I have more and more iOS devices, for me as someone who loved the OS10 devices is sad, but can’t do much with it, I have to accept the fact that these days iPhone and Androids are more popular.

I have a problem with iOS activation for a long time, I have a case open with BB Support (case number 0004706057) since September 2017, they are still in the investigation phase. I’m wondering if I’m the only one with this problem or there are others too.

I assign the iPhone on the DEP website to my BlackBerry server, on the BES UEM they become visible, I assign the configuration profile to the phone. I do the activation all goes well, it gets the configuration during activation and I get to the home screen. Asks me to type the password of the email profile and I start to receive the emails. I signed in to AppStore and do a free app download and leave the phone. For more than 12 hours nothing happens with the phone, then suddenly the Work Apps web clip becomes available on the phone and the phones installs the BES UEM client, also other apps what I push to the phone. On the device actions page of BES, I see that BES sent the app install command the time I activated the phone and also the same time set the activation bypass code. 12 hours later when the BES UEM client install happens, with the same time stamp, I see at the same page saying that activation bypass code set failed. Application install command completed.

I submitted debug level logs from my BES servers which covers that 12 hours and iPhone console logs from the phone before it happens the app installation and once it happened. In both logs (server and iPhone) it is clearly visible that every few seconds the phone communicates with my BES servers. Up till the point it really installs the UEM client it keeps re-running the activation bypass code set and push settings, it tries every seconds nearly.

I don’t think this is normal. It makes my life difficult, especially when I need to prepare 10-15 iPhones in one go, makes the whole activation miserably lengthy.

I can’t even leave this with the users, but that would be the biggest benefit of using DEP activation in normal situation.

So is there anyone else with the same problem?

Thanks!

[freakinvibe]

We are using DEP as well and we have set the UEM client as mandatory app. To distribute the UEM client and other apps, we use Apple VPP. This enable us to setup the DEP phones without having to put in an Apple ID.

When we activate, the user has to insert their AD account credentials and set a device passcode. After that, the Work Apps and the UEM client immediately appears on the phone. The user then has to start the UEM client once via QR code.

The whole process takes about 5 minutes. So I guess something is going wrong on your side.

[Mynet85]

Hi,

I set also as required the UEM client. I will to add UEM client (is it possible) in the VPP and see what will happen. Maybe that helps. Thanks for the tip!

[Mynet85]

After testing the way @freakinvibe deploys UEM client to the phone, I can say it became better, but there is one important setting we also need to set if we want to install UEM client without AppleID. You need to use device licensing when you add the VPP application.

[freakinvibe]

Yes, that is correct. With User Licensing, you need an Apple ID. With Device Licensing, you don't need an Apple ID. If the user would like to download any non-business apps, he or she would still need an Apple ID, though.

[Mynet85]

Did some other test today with mixed results. Using device licensing and VPP, I see improvement, sometimes takes like 10 minute to set up a phone, some cases hours till the work apps appears on the home screen. Still no reply from BB Support, on Monday they promised me to get in contact with me regards the device and server Core logs. Still nothing...

[freakinvibe]

Normally, pushed apps appear within some seconds. Something must go wrong in your infrastructure. Networking issues?

What you see is definitely not the normal behaviour.

[Mynet85]

It is not network as you see the communication between the phone and our bes server every few seconds. In both logs are visible.

[dekvn]

Hi, you might have found the problem yourself by now. If so, maybe this helps others.

We also faced this problem in october 2017. Apps would take hours to push on iOS dep devices. We escalated to Blackberry which took forever as well so I tried assigning different sets of policies and drilled it down to disabling activation lock.

Since disabling it in the IT policy, we enrolled about 500 iPhones without a problem.

[Mynet85]

@dekvn: Thanks for the info. Personally I wouldn’t do this because in the past we had many problem of phones what we got back from a leaver employee wiped with iCloud lock or Factory Reset Protection activated, in many cases you don’t have a chance to get the leaver to type the creds to unlock it, you ended up collecting expensive paper weights. iCloud by-pass code is really good to avoid this.
At the end they provided me a fix for my 12.7.1 what I haven’t install as 12.7.2 was already out and the fix was a full alternative install package of 12.7.1 with 3gb installer. I run a two node BB UEM environment, takes usually 3-4 hours to do an update with everything included: extract installer 1st time from zip, extract installer 2nd time with bb extractor, backup of vms, backup of db, install updates in windows, install 1st node, wait till it loads after install, copy installer to 2nd node, install 2nd node, wait till it loads.
Because 12.7.2 already was available asked support to see if that already contains the fix or I have to install again the same fix or there is a separate fix for 12.7.2 too. They confirm the correct procedure to upgrade to 12.7.2 in my case is installing 12.7.1 fix, then 12.7.2 normal release, then 12.7.2 fix. As described above I was hesitating to do 3x times 3-4 hours downtime for my environment. Finally 12.8.0 has been released and asked support to confirm that contains the fix or not already. They confirmed it does contain it, no need to install any extra fix.
So big breath, taking the possible risk of new versions, especially after reading of know issues in the release notes, and upgraded my environment to 12.8.0.
Did a test activation with 11.2.5 DEP enrolled phone and I can’t believe, haven’t see this before since I have iPhones in my environment, 3 seconds after activating to my BES server it starts to download all VPP apps I assigned to the user. Knowing that there was also and issue with 11.3 activation since that iOS version was out, upgraded the phone and did another activation. It worked like a charm this time too. This iOS 11.3 release also was one of the reason I had to upgrade to 12.8, cause I really doubted that BB created a combined fix which fixes my original problem and the 11.3 activation in BES 12.7.1 or 12.7.2.

So nearly everything is perfect now, except that I noticed that around 1/3 of my 86 iOS phones were not connected to my BES servers for 1-2-3 more weeks. I had a few of these phones in my hands and on the phone I haven’t find any issues, they run the latest version of BES UEM client. So I have no idea what is going on, so opened another case with BB Support.

[freakinvibe]

Maybe this is happening due to this issue?

'Update device information' command fails for iOS 11.3 devices

When you look at Device Actions, do you see a "Failed" status?