Apple Volume Purchase Program

Introduction

With Apple's Volume Purchase Program (VPP), organizations can centralize the purchase of apps, and with the help of CapaInstaller's integration to VPP, manage licenses and deploy apps to their users and devices. With VPP you can retain ownership of your apps, and they can be reclaimed and assigned to other users once they aren't needed anymore.

You can either choose the VPP for Business or VPP for Education, and each has its advantages. App developers can for example choose to offer special pricing for educational institutions, giving 50% discount for purchases in quantities of 20 or more. With VPP for the business, you can take advantage of custom B2B apps, which developers can build to your specific needs. These custom B2B apps are distributed privately and securely through the VPP store, so only you can access them, and they can be deployed like any other app using CapaInstaller.

Apple Volume licenses with CapaInstaller MDM

VPP License Management

Once you have linked your VPP to CapaInstaller, the apps you purchased will automatically be synchronized to the system, and you can start managing your licenses and distribute apps to your users and devices. In System Administration, you can assign or revoke licenses to users that are already associated with your VPP account. By assigning a license to a user, that user is able to use the application on all of his devices, but it does require an Apple ID, and the user must have been invited to the VPP.

If you wish to avoid managing Apple IDs in your organization, you can take advantage of the option to assign licenses directly to devices, but this requires iOS9 or higher.

The licenses can be found in your Apple VPP, in the Software Accounts section of System Administration. By selecting the Licenses folder, an overview of your purchased apps are displayed, where you can see how many licenses you have for each, and how many are still available.

By selecting one of the apps in the navigation pane, you will get more detailed information on each license for that app in the content view. The associated licenses are either assigned to a user through its Apple ID or to a device through its serial number. If the device with either the Apple ID or serial number exists in the system, the name of that device will be displayed for each license in the Linked Device column. You can navigate to between linked users, devices and licenses as seen below.

Read more:

How To Assign VPP Licenses

How To Revoke VPP Licenses

VPP User Management

Linking your VPP to CapaInstaller will also synchronize the users you have associated with the program to the system. You can assign and revoke licenses to these users manually, and the system can automate the process using Enrollment Configurations and Device Applications.

Below you can see an example of how to manually assign a license to a user:

Read more:

How to Invite users to VPP

Distribution of Apps

Assigning a license to a device or the user of a device makes it possible to install the app on the device but it is not actually installed. You could first assign licenses and then in another process deploy your apps, but CapaInstaller gives you some powerful tools to automate this process. When creating a device application in CapaInstaller you configure it to use licenses from your VPP account and if it should assign them to the device or the user of the device. That means that when you schedule the app for installation, it will automatically assign a license if needed, and when the app is removed it will automatically revoke the license again. You can even combine this feature with your enrollment configurations, so devices or their users receive both the apps they need and any licenses required for the installation when enrolling their device.

Read more:

Create Apps with CapaInstaller MDM