Continued activation lock woes.

[JamesG1]

Our school district continues to be impacted by the mid-year change to activation lock.

Out of the blue, random student iPads are activation locked and it is requiring support attention. We are doing it remotely when possible. Other times, when remote unlock is unsuccessful I've had to actually ask our techs to bring them downtown since they are locked with our super admin account.

We have used the advice on the website and added "Privacy & Lock" to all the profiles and unchecked the required box. Devices continue to get locked anyway. As mentioned in another "solved" thread, this profile setting most likely needs to be in place during the initial enrollment as its definitely not getting it for previously deployed iPads. It seems like it's in the wrong place in the workflow and can't fix this mid-year change by Meraki.

This new system is inherently broken. I've put in a High priority ticket and I will be very interested to see what the response is.

[kYutobi]

That is odd. There's also talk about this on this thread.

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Endpoint-Management-Systems/Activation-Locked-iPads/m-p/37600#M4018

[vassallon]

@JamesG1 So here is what I have determined happened:

Meraki implemented the MDM activation lock feature without any warning and set the default value to on which enabled activation locks on all of our iPads. Unchecking the Allow activation lock value in the Privacy and Lock settings, turns off the activation lock of iPads setup after that. That said we are still left with all the iPads that were activation locked due to the new "feature." This leaves me with two options either working with Apple to clear all of the activation locks or using Meraki and removing all of the activation locks that way. 

[kYutobi]

@vassallon I actually posted your thread about this issue as well. 

[Mark24]

Has anyone got the Privacy and Lock profile to install ? I am current getting errors and it won't install, I have a ticket open with Meraki and they said it is a know issue. So it seems like they force activation lock on for all ios devices and the only way to turn it off seems to be broken...

[JamesG1]

"Thank you for contacting Cisco Meraki Support. I see that this is an existing bug and is worked upon by our development team. I have attached this case to the parent bug case so that I can update you as soon as a fixed is released for this issue. Let me know if you have any further queries or concerns."

[vassallon]

@JamesG1  Thanks for the Python script. I did have to contact Meraki support in the end to allow me to use it but it works like a champ for mass clearing activation locks.