Why You Must Remember to Update Terms and Conditions in Apple Business Manager

When Apple releases a major OS update, a small number of users may find that their device management solutions stop working. In most cases, this isn’t a problem at all, just a licensing condition that needs to be addressed.

Make journal dates for T&C and other settings

When major OS updates roll out, Apple often asks its customers to approve new terms and conditions (T&Cs). When you upgrade to iOS 16 or macOS Ventura, you may need to accept new terms and conditions.

The problem with managed fleets of devices is that if those devices are not approved, some functionality may stop working. Fortunately, you can easily restore your system to normal in Apple Business Manager.

If you open Apple Business Manager with administrator privileges, you’ll find a setting there that allows you to accept any newly posted terms and conditions. This isn’t a daunting requirement because you don’t need to click the mouse to approve permissions for each device—you just accept each new set of terms once and approve them across all managed Apple devices. Another benefit is that your users won’t be asked to self-approve requests on their own devices; you’re already approving new T&Cs from the console.

Things can go wrong if you don’t approve

The problem is that until these T&Cs are approved, you may find that your fleet is unresponsive, newly purchased application licenses are not available, or newly added devices are not visible in Apple Business Manager. If you run into any of these issues, it’s worth opening Apple Business Manager in administrator mode and making sure you’re up to date on T&C approvals. Your admin should have been notified of the change, so this isn’t an issue for most people, although you may still experience it sometimes, for example when a new employee steps into the Mac admin role.

Once you’ve approved the terms and conditions, you should find your MDM system starts working properly again, although it may take some time for the changes to propagate through the system.

There are other permissions that Apple administrators may need to keep in mind that are updated each year. Device enrollment, Apple Push Notification (APN) service certificates, and Apps and Books tokens all need attention. In most cases, your MDM system will tell you when such a refresh is required. But even the best systems can fail (often with alerts when key employees leave or take on new roles); you can do this by renewing your APN certificate from the same Apple ID that was used to create it originally, or by following Apple’s MDM server configuration or the instructions in the Apps and Books “Server Tokens” guide to correct this problem.

In the latter case, you should find the setting you need to tweak Preferences > Payments & Billing > My Server Tokens.

method in madness

The need to refresh permissions and approve T&Cs might seem like a hassle, but there’s an opportunity locked in the process: every time you approve something, you also have the opportunity to see how permissions were assigned. In terms of device management, this isn’t a huge issue, since you’ll probably keep a close eye on who the device is assigned to, but can provide a slight benefit in terms of software licensing, as you can identify licenses that you no longer need to assign.

The main lesson is the same as usual – when things go wrong, don’t panic – just check that all settings are up to date. Device management is like security; after all, nine out of ten of the biggest problems are related to human error. I’m a problem you can’t easily fix and requires you to maintain the necessary skill base to keep systems running when more important things go awry.

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