The Apps and Books token (previously known as a VPP token) allows for communication between Addigy and Apple to facilitate easy deployment of Apps from the App Store. This token requires yearly renewals in order to maintain proper communication and can also be invalidated if an Administrator within Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager uses the forgot password feature to reset their password. This article will go over how to renew an existing token within Addigy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Finding Expired or Invalid Token
- Renewing Expired or Invalid Token
- Verifying Apps and Books token
- Token Errors When Renewing
Finding Expired or Invalid Token
Tokens within Addigy that are in a disabled state will have events logged within Dashboard >> Events. To get a high level view of which tokens or how many are currently not working, an Addigy administrator can add a filter of Receiver Type = vpp-token to quickly find all logged events (logged events are kept for up to 90 days). Below is a screenshot showing an example error message.
Additionally, error messages can be found when navigating to the Apps and Books Assets section within a Policy or by navigating to Policies > Settings > Apps & Books. Within this page, there will be a large red error box that presents the error message near the Scan Now button
Renewing Expired or Invalid Token
To renew an Apps and Books token that is in a non-working state, first go to business.apple.com or school.apple.com (depending on your organization type) and log in. Please ensure that the account permissions are at least Content Manager or higher as the next steps will not show if proper permissions are missing within Apple.
Once logged into the portal, select where it says your name in the bottom left and then "Preferences" from the available options. Once the page loads, click "Payments and Billing" and scroll down to the "Server Tokens" section. From there, click on the name of the Apps & Books token and it'll download a .vpptoken file which is the token.
Now that the fresh Apps and Books token is downloaded, Click the Renew button within the Policy in Addigy. This will bring up a window where the token can be dropped into or be clicked on to open a file browser to select the file. Once the file is selected, click Save to upload the file to Addigy.
The last step after uploading the Apps and Books token is to confirm that the information is correct. An example of this confirmation window is shown below. This window will display the identification number, name, Apple ID, and organization that the token is associated with. Please verify this information prior to clicking the final save on this window.
Verifying Apps and Books token
Now that the Apps and Books token has been renewed, the page will request information from Apple and refresh all the licenses that are associated with it. This will not revoke or remove any applications from devices associated with this token. Once the initial scan is complete, the times and dates of the last successful sync will show on this page.
Token Errors When Renewing
In a small number of cases, there can be a case where a token will not be able to renew. These are usually when the identifier of the token that was expired does not match the identifier of the token that is being used to renew. In this case, it is best to use the Remove Token button to disassociate and remove the old token prior to adding the token with the new identifier.