How to generate an APNs Certificate to use the Apple MDM protocol via the portal

Transcription

1 How to generate an APNs Certificate to use the Apple MDM protocol via the portal Introduction Before you can manage ios devices with your device management portal you will need an Apple Push Notification service (APNs) certificate. The Apple Push Notification service (APNs) is used to communicate to your devices. Each organization needs their own APNs certificate for their devices to communicate across Apple s push notification network. We can not supply the APNs certificate for your organization. You are responsible for acquiring the certificate. This help text explains how to acquire this certificate. In order to acquire a certificate, you need to have an Apple Enterprise Developer account. This help text will also explain how to get this account. You need to upload the acquired certificate. In this way it is possible to connect your ios devices with the your device management portal and to be able to send configuration tasks to the ios devices. Important steps in generating an APNs certificate You can obtain an APNs certificate by creating one via a Mac computer or via a Windows server. Please choose the way that suits you most. There is one section with instructions how to obtain the certificate with a Mac and one with a Windows server. Before you can start with requesting the certificate from Apple, you need an Apple Enterprise Developer account. 1. Acquire an Apple Enterprise Developer account (developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise). A so called DUNS number is mandatory. Every company has got an DUNS number. You can get this number from the Dun & Bradstreet local branch. Goto their website: fill in your country in the drop-downbox in the upper right corner and give them a call. There is also the possibility to acquire (for free) a DUNS number via the website if you don t have one yet. 2. Generating an APNs Certificate for MDM. 3. Download the Certificate. 4. Upload the certificate in the portal 5. You are ready to use the ios services in the portal Important notes before you start: Your developer account role must be Agent! (Do not use the Admin role) You need administrator permissions for your Mac workstation or Windows Server

2 Generating an APNs Certificate from a Mac The following instructions are for generating an APNs certificate using a Mac OS X workstation. For Windows Server instructions you may skip this section. First you need to generate a certificate signing request. From you Mac go to Applications->Utilities- >Keychain Access Select the login Keychain from the left sidebar and Certificates for the category. From the top menu select Keychain Access» Certificate Assistant» Request a Certificate From a Certificate Authority

3 The certificate wizard appears. Fill out the User Address and the Common Name with the and name of the person registered with your Apple Developer account. Select save to disk and click continue. Save the file to the location you like.

4 You have now created a Certificate Signing Request that you need to upload to the Apple development portal. Remember you need to select this saved CSR later on in this manual. Open your browser and navigate to Select Member Center. Fill in your Developer Apple ID and password and click Sign in. Select ios Provisioning Portal When you don t see the provisioning portal you need to setup your development account for ios development.

5 Select App IDs from the left sidebar and select New App ID in the right uppercorner of the tab. Fill in the description, the bundle seed ID should be on Generate new and fill in the Bundle Identifier. The Bundle Identifier must be the following: com.apple.mgmt.yourcompany. Replace yourcompany with your company name. Select submit to continue.

6 In the next screen you will see your new App ID in the list (bottom). Select Configure on the right side. In the next screen check the checkbox in front of Enable for Apple Push Notification service and select Configure for Production Push SSL Certificate.

7 Now you will see the APNs Certificate assistant. Select Continue Select Choose file and choose the CSR (CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest) you saved in the first steps. Select Generate.

8 This can take a moment. The next screen should appear. Select Continue : Select Download to save the file to your desktop (you don t need to download it to the Notification Server because this will be done via the portal).

9 Double-click on the file (aps_production_identity.cer) to upload it to Keychain Access in the next step. Click on OK to add it to a keychain to complete the signing request.

10 Go back to the Keychain Access. When, on the left, the keychain login and the category Certificates are selected, you can see the Apple Production Push Services certificate. When you expand the certificate (left side of the certificate line), you should see its private key

11 Your APNs certificate is ready. In the lasts steps you need to export the certificate in order to be able to upload it in the portal. Right-click on the private key and select export name private key Save the file to your computer with the.p12 extension. This is the file you will need for the upload in the portal

12 After saving you are required to set a password. You will need this password when you upload the certificate into the portal Possibly the next screen pops up with the keychain password. Here you need to fill in your administrator password Now you are ready to upload the certificate to the portal in order to use the ios functionality in the portal.