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Positive Changes to Apple Business Manager Signup Flows!

Apple Business Manager is Apple’s front door for a lot of businesses. It’s an incredibly powerful tool for assigning your devices to your management solution, buying apps for use within your business, and making Managed Apple IDs for your team to use. Unfortunately, it’s been a bear to setup for the first time. The signup method required a DUNS Number, identification of a corporate officer who can sign contracts on behalf of your business, internal vetting by Apple staff and contractors, and a whole bunch of documentation.

It was daunting as hell.

Especially if you’re new to IT!

Well, Apple has made the experience substantially simpler for businesses to go through this process as of recently, and it’s exciting to see that there’s room to streamline complex processes and make them smoother.

When you sign up for Apple Business Manager now, here’s how it goes. When you go to business.apple.com, you can click Sign Up:

A Screenshot from Apple Business Manager featuring a new workflow for Get Started with Apple Business Manager, with subheads for Automated Device Enrollment, Apps and Books, and Managed Apple IDs, with a button marked Get Started

The next step is all about who you are as the initial creator:

A sign up form for Apple Business Manager with First Name, Last Name, Email, Business Name, Website (optional) and Location, as well as a checkbox for receiving promotional mail.

Once you’ve filled out your name, email, business name, and website, as well as confirmed your region, you’re taken to the next screen:

The next screen confirms your Apple ID information and password, and sets up your trusted phone number.

After setting up a password, I had to enter my phone number and a verification method, as well as enter in a captcha to prove I’m a human being.

Apple then verified my email address and my phone number with six digit temporary codes sent via email and SMS.

A standard verification screen which verified my email by prompting me for a six digit code sent to my email
A standard verification screen which verified my phone number by prompting me for a six digit code sent to my phone via SMS.

After I was verified, I was prompted to accept the Terms & Conditions.

An image containing a lot of legal language that represents Apple's terms and conditions.

Once I accepted, I was welcome to Apple Business Manager! I was done! No phone calls yet, no contracts, no DUNS number.

A welcome screen from Apple with friendly memoji faces and an Apple laptop with a button to Get Started.

Once I was registered, I could begin to use the features of Apple Business Manager! Well, some of them. Some need verification with Apple:

The Organization Information screen at Apple Business Manager. It has a Verify your business to access features screen that indicates that buying apps and enrolling devices via Automated Device Enrollment are not yet available. A prominent Verify button is available. A 59-day timer remains and indicates that should this timer expire, my org will be deleted with all my data destroyed.

Specifically, Apple needs you to verify your business in order to do Automated Device Enrollment (and zero-touch device setup), as well as purchase apps for your organization. However, that’s a separate process that doesn’t gate the creation of your Apple Business Manager account, which is awesome.

I’ll have a sequel post on how to get through Verification right after my paperwork from DC is complete on a new project!

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