1. Introduction#
The Apple School Manager Connector is an app for UCS@school. It provisions the schools, classes, work groups, teachers, and students of your UCS@school domain to Apple School Manager, so that you don’t have to maintain the same accounts twice.
In this setup, UCS@school takes the role of the student information system that Apple School Manager expects, and the connector uses the SFTP interface that Apple provides for such systems. The connector collects the data from the LDAP directory, writes it to a set of CSV files, packs them into a ZIP archive, and uploads that archive to Apple School Manager.
1.1. Who this documentation is for#
This documentation addresses administrators who run a UCS@school domain and who want to provision its users to Apple School Manager. It assumes that you’re familiar with the administration of UCS and UCS@school, in particular with the following topics:
The App Center, see Univention App Center in the UCS manual [1].
The UCR, see Administration of local system configuration with Univention Configuration Registry in the UCS manual [1].
The school objects that UCS@school manages, see UCS@school-Objekte im LDAP-Verzeichnisdienst in the UCS@school manual [2], which is available only in German.
1.2. What you need#
Before you start, make sure that you have the following:
A UCS@school domain with at least one school.
An Apple School Manager account for an educational institution.
The SFTP credentials for the Apple School Manager account. Obtain the SFTP credentials describes where to find them.
A primary email address for each user. Apple School Manager uses the email address as the Apple Account and can’t create an account for a user without one.
1.3. What the connector synchronizes#
The connector transfers data in one direction only, from UCS@school to Apple School Manager. It never reads data back, and it never changes objects in your UCS@school domain.
The following table lists what the connector maps to which Apple School Manager entity.
UCS@school object |
Apple School Manager entity |
|---|---|
School |
Location |
School class or work group |
Course and class |
Student |
Student |
Teacher and teacher with staff role |
Staff member |
Membership of a student in a school class or work group |
Roster entry |
Apple School Manager requires every class to belong to a course, so the connector turns each school class and work group into a course with exactly one class in it. See Courses.
Staff members without a teacher role aren’t synchronized. Exam users aren’t synchronized either.
Synchronization describes the mapping in detail, including the individual CSV columns.
1.4. Passwords and devices#
The connector never transfers passwords. Apple School Manager creates the passwords for new accounts itself, and you distribute them from there. Password policy for students describes how to influence the length of those passwords.
For device management, Univention recommends a mobile device management solution that offers an interface to Apple School Manager. The Univention integration catalog lists the solutions that integrate with UCS@school.