Most Apple admins start the same way: a console, a checklist, and a lot of repetitiveclicking. At JNUC's Level Up session on automation and the Jamf Platform API, I spent afew hours moving from "I operate the tool" to "I teach the tool to operate itself." Here is what stayed with me, including a few opinions I formed along the way. 1. Automation starts with decisions, not commands I expected the scripting portion to be about syntax. It was really about decision-making if, elif, and else are how a script encodes judgment. When you write a compound condition, you are writing downwhat a senior admin would think through before acting: A script with only a "happy path" is a liability. The three-way branch above gives you a different, useful message for each failure, which is exactly what helps when it runs on 500 Macs and you only see the logs.Takeaways:Learn the difference between [[ ]] for strings, files, and comparisons, and (( ))for arithmetic. Using the right one makes scripts easier t

This fall 2026 is definitely full of firsts for me! It was my first time on stage at JNUC, and I loved it. It is also my first Tech Thoughts post, so I’m very pleased to join the club and share a few tips from my session on governing AI tools with Jamf. I had fun preparing this session because drawing the parallel between Shadow IT and Shadow AI took me back to my days as an IT admin, before I joined Jamf. The cat and mouse game has not changed, the pace has. Every month, every week, almost every day, there is a new cool tool or a new threat around the corner and someone who wants to play with it. In my session I wanted to acknowledge that while highlighting the potential risks for organizations and the strategies to regain control: visibility into what is happening, a way to block what they have not approved and control over what they have. Here are three tips on AI Governance, the feature we released just a few months ago and that many Jamf customers are already trying. Start with vi

 Six workflows that show how a Mac problem travels from detection to a fix, an alert or a ticket. DEX stands for digital employee experience: measuring how a device feels to the person using it, then acting on what you find. 1. The DEX loopA single device event passes through the whole loop. Once a fix runs at Act, the device statechanges, and the next time it reaches Collect it reports a new reading. What happens    What happensCollect: the Mac reports built-in inventory plus your extension attributes at each recon. Detect: Smart Groups with DEX - names hold every device with a fault. Notify: a webhook tells chat or the ticket tool when group membership changes. Act: a scoped policy fixes what is safe to fix. Measure: the API feeds a score and a trend line. 2. Self-healing with a retry capA device that heals on the first run leaves the group and is done. A device that keeps failing is retriedup to three times, then handed to a person.  What happens1. A recon updates the disk reading a

The Jamf Nation User Conference is a special time for Apple IT folks. Some attendees are still recovering from the massive uptick in steps covered during the conference. Others are still buzzing over the Keynote and State of the Union announcements. And we Apple Admins got busy the following Monday implementing fresh Apples.As for me, I walked away with 10 random thoughts floating around in my head. Between BBQ eats, pho dives, and caffeinated drinks, I even rented a car to extend my stay through the weekend with a car rental for city exploration.Let’s jump into the list! 1️⃣ The JNUC experience gives everyone an excuse to explore new towns. Every city has its own DNA. I like to get to know a place through my stomach. So, which BBQ did I like best? I actually preferred Q39 over Joe’s KC BBQ. The meats were just better at Q39. The hour-long line at Joe’s didn’t thrill me. Though I loved the interior space. The meats were a tad dry and on the salty side. Am I going to get flak for this? 

A full 24 hours before the opening keynote lights came up, a room full of admins had already rolled up their sleeves and dived into the Jamf Platform. That's Level Up, a one-day exclusive in-person training at JNUC, where folks can chat it up with other admins, jump right into the products, and walk straight into hands-on labs, all while earning a badge to prove it along the way. This year's sessions filled up fast, and having spent the day watching the classrooms in action, I'm convinced it's the best-kept secret of JNUC. I wanted to share what it was like from the inside and make the case for why you shouldn't skip it next year. Two tracks, one packed dayThis year, two training options were offered: Level Up Your Jamf Management and Security Workflows, and Level Up Your Automation and Jamf API Skills. Both were structured as hands-on labs, not lecture-and-slides sessions, which meant admins spent the day actually building, configuring, and troubleshooting rather than just watching a

If you have ever answered a question in Jamf Nation at the end of a long workday, helped a coworker finally get a workflow running, shared a script with a peer, or shown up to a user group meeting with tips or questions, this one's for you. Jamf Heroes is designed for people who are passionate about helping the broader Mac Admin community thrive with Apple. It's a space to share, learn, grow, collaborate, and give back to the Apple admin world. Three community members share their perspectives on the benefits of the Jamf Heroes program and how it has helped them find success in their careers.   Hear from Heroes Chris Hafner, a longtime Hero, stays in the program year after year for a variety of reasons. While they have evolved over time, the crux of it is the human connection and the solid relationships he has built. "It's the people and the positivity! It's a collection of people, and Jamfs, who have really come to support each other in a very positive discussion group to move not only

Four badges. Four conferences. One meaningful journey.  Four years of JNUC—from attendee to speaker.Being a Mac admin in a long-established Windows enterprise can sometimes be a lonely road.Policies, security controls, governance and expectations naturally grow around the dominant platform. As a result, people may expect Macs to operate much like Windows PCs.But macOS is not Windows. It was never meant to be.When we introduced Apple management through Jamf, I do not think any of us—including me—fully appreciated how many systems would eventually intersect with it. Identity, networking, DNS, endpoint security, CASB, VPN, certificates and other controls all influence the management experience.That complexity taught me something important: Apple device management is a cross-team discipline. Success requires technical skill, cooperation and a willingness to understand where different systems meet.Sometimes you are building the very road you are expected to travel.I certainly did not get ev

If you’ve ever looked at a question during an exam and suddenly forgotten something you’ve practiced dozens of times, you’re not alone. Exam anxiety is real, and it affects all of us differently. Jamf Training Courses include a certification process, and the thought of any exam can be stress-inducing. Even for an experienced Jamf Admin, there’s often a different feeling when you’re completing those tasks under a time pressure. The good news is that exam anxiety doesn’t have to prevent you from succeeding, and I wanted to share some strategies I’ve seen help students prepare with confidence and perform their best during Jamf Training Courses.During Your Training CourseParticipate in ClassThis might seem obvious, but one of the best strategies for preparing yourself for the exam is to actively participate in the Training Course. Follow along with the material in the way that you learn best, whether that’s watching the demonstrations before completing the lesson tasks or mirroring the dem

It’s all about community with JNUC. That is the biggest and most important thing I took away from JNUC 2026 this year, apart from all the technical stuff, of which there was plenty, but that isn't what this article is about. I had been to a JAMF Nation User Conference before, back in 2025, and it was great. This year was no exception, with one large distinction: it wasn’t my first JNUC this time. I was lucky enough to get to go this year via the “Diversity Sponsorship.” Which is, in very plain words, an amazing opportunity offered by Jamf to give tickets to a lucky few users who fall into any of the diversity categories. Myself, a trans woman living in the South, I fell into the LGBTQ+ area of the diversity spectrum. With the sponsorship, the other winners and I were able to attend a very thorough “Level Up!” class that was offered a day before the conference officially began. The class was great, full of information, and genuinely worth whatever they would have charged, plus more. Alo

Those who know, really know. And they’re excited. In less than a week, Apple admins from around the globe will descend on Kansas City for one of the most-anticipated events of the year. JNUC 2026…we’re coming…and we have exciting additions. Let’s get into it. This year, you’ll experience an entirely new Jamf Nation booth. While I won’t give away the details, I’ll leave you with a riddle:  You've typed my name a thousand times to install something else.This time, say it out loud — and someone hands you a cup.Come back all three days. I'll have something new for you each time.No install required. Excited? We are. Lots of details (big and small) went into this year’s booth, so ensure it’s on your agenda. And don’t worry. Even if you forget, we’ll be hard to miss. And in true JNUC fashion, community will fill the halls. Friends, new and old, are waiting to meet you. But if talking to random strangers isn’t your thing, just remember:They’re there for the same reasons as you. Everyone wants

Let me bring you back to a version of me circa 2012–2015.I had been laid off from my job in a non-technical field. I wasn't in tech or IT at all, but I was a tech hobbyist. I'm sitting at home in my apartment looking at social media—what we would now call doomscrolling—and I come across a post looking for people interested in starting their own business fixing iPhones and iPads in their area.The hobbyist in me was very interested.That eventually led to me starting a small IT company where my bread and butter was fixing broken iPhone and iPad screens.My wife and I had just gotten married, and we moved out to the San Francisco Bay Area. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, there was no shortage of broken iPhones and iPads (and eventually Samsung devices) to fix. But I could see a future where fixing five to eight phones a day would get tedious, and more importantly, wouldn't really scale financially.So I started the multi-year process of shutting down my company and focusing my career o

For over 16 years, Apple admins have gathered at the Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) to learn, connect and discover better ways to manage and secure Apple devices. In its tenth year, the JNUC Diversity Sponsorship awards 10 individuals a full conference registration, a meet-and-greet with Jamf leaders, a networking happy hour and a $500 stipend to help cover expenses. We're looking for passionate people eager to learn and bring fresh perspectives to the tightest community in high tech.Applications close at 5 p.m. CST on May 1, 2026. Apply now!Read further to get all the details about Scooter and Alan's first-hand experience as scholarship recipients. SCOOTER’S STORYMy name is Scooter Kohler and I currently work at Alhambra ESD in Phoenix, Az. My journey with Apple hardware didn't start in a server room; it started in my daily life. I’ve been a MacBook user for the entirety of my adult life, drawn in by the clean hardware and stayed for the intuitive nature of the software. When the

Nobody knew what anyone else had builtThe first real AI problem on our team had nothing to do with model quality. It was that dozens of people had each built something genuinely useful, and none of them knew about the others.  That’s where CSAssistNOW came in. All applications I have developed with AI end in the word “NOW” because it is directionally accurate to the time it takes to build, it is catchy, and almost a little bit annoying. It’s just a shared place to publish and find the prompts and skills people build.There are four reasons we wanted this. Visibility - Once a department gets past a certain size, AI use can very quickly become fragmented. Someone automates a renewal summary, someone else builds an account brief, then another builds a risk status dashboard. A library helps make the work visible and legible. You can see how AI is actually being used vs. how it’s supposed to be used, or what you see folks using it for on social media. Basic social features were added to try

What is learning and do you like to learn?Do you know what content would be relevant for you?Hey, I thought you are here to teach me and not to ask questions.Yes, but questions are a method of teaching and I have a bunch of those.But what about learning, how do we learn or more precisely:What type of learner are you?Auditory / Visual / Read&Write / Kinesthetic(more acronyms, just like a Jamf Class on day one)"So let’s explore."Learning something new has so many options today, not all of them are made for you and me and sometimes I need multiple choices. Not because a resource is wrong, just it connects better with my brain. I remember teaching ski lessons to a bunch of teenagers and I was stuck with one of them on day two. No progress, tried it all, nothing clicked. So we decided to switch training groups. And it clicked, I saw them going down hill super nice. I asked my fellow ski instructor what he did, "same as you before" he said, "maybe just another perspective".While we can’t

For years, MacAdmins have had to manage random service files (like ssh, pam, sudo, etc) with packages, scripts, custom agents, postinstall logic, or vendor specific workflows. In 2023 with macOS Sonoma, Apple introduced a feature that sort of slipped under the radar a bit on how it could be used…Declarative Device Management (DDM) added Service Configuration Files. Service Configuration Files give us a declarative, tamper resistant, native way to deliver text based configuration. Service Management Configuration files fixes managing text configuration files that live throughout the macOS, something traditional legacy MDM couldn’t do. That is boring in the best possible way. You set it, and it can’t be changed or messed with. But what if you could use it beyond Apple’s documented use cases…managing third party apps, or even building or own app that reads its configuration this way?To use Service Configuration Files you create a zip file of a configuration for certain services and then a

From a small email distribution list to a formalized community forum, Jamf Nation has served as the premier online resource for Apple management enthusiasts for more than a decade. And recently, in case you missed the news, it hit a milestone - 300,000 posts. Jamf’s founder, and former CEO, Zach Halmstad, not only recognized the desire for customers to share ideas as a way to problem solve, but he also saw their need to connect as humans. So in 2012, he pitched an idea - Jamf Nation.   “Early on we witnessed the huge benefits our customers saw when they could ask each other questions and share their solutions,” Halmstad recalled. “Jamf Nation was the next step for us to ensure customers were successful.”In a 16-slide Keynote, Halmstad pitched his idea to his colleagues at Jamf. He shared the reasons to shift the company’s rapidly growing email distribution list to an online forum, citing communication as a main goal. (Slide from original deck shown below). Fast forward 12 years, a

Engage. Empower. Elevate.When we started Mac Admins India, the vision was simple: create a place where Apple IT professionals across India could learn from one another, build meaningful connections, and strengthen the enterprise Apple ecosystem.On 1 August 2026, the Apple IT community came together at Radisson Blu Hotel, Outer Ring Road, Bengaluru, for the second edition of Mac Admins India Connect. What began as an idea to bring Apple IT professionals together has quickly grown into India’s largest community-driven conference dedicated to Apple enterprise professionals.What began as an idea has now become India’s largest community-driven conference dedicated to Apple IT professionals.Community FirstTechnology conferences are often measured by attendance numbers, sponsors, or session counts. While those are important milestones, the true success of a community event is measured by the conversations that happen between the sessions.This year we welcomed 370+ attendees from across India

An original version of this post has been shared to Patch Notes and Progress. Reflections from JNUC 2025 — automation, openness, and community taking Mac management to new heights. Denver, Colorado | October 6 – 9, 2025Day 0 — Travel and New ConnectionsJNUC 2025 in Denver was my first in-person Jamf Nation User Conference — and my first time ever on a plane. Over three days, I watched Jamf redefine what MDM means in an API-first world, connected with the Mac Admins community I’ve long admired, and saw firsthand how automation, identity, and community are working to shape the next chapter of Apple device management services. As mentioned in a previous post: Prepping for JNUC 2025, I had been awarded sponsorship by Jamf to attend this year’s Jamf Nation User Conference in Denver Colorado. Before I even left Pittsburgh, Jamf had already dropped next year’s headline: JNUC 2026 will be held in Kansas City, Missouri (Sept 23– 25), with early-bird registration open. JNUC 2026 to be hosted at

I've worked in IT for over 20 years, and I've seen plenty of changes. But AI is the biggest shift I've faced yet. Like any new technology, it brings real benefits and real challenges. That's especially true in training. Most of the students I work with are already using AI, and the rest plan to start soon. It's making them faster and more efficient. But it's also introducing a new risk,  the quality of the answers their AI tools hand back. This is where I think Jamf has gotten something right. Their own AI Assistant, built into Jamf Pro, takes a different approach than the general AI tools my students reach for. AI Assistant can read, analyse, explain, and surface information from your Jamf environment. But it can't modify configurations, push policies, enrol devices, or take any action that changes your fleet's state. It's built to help you understand, not to act on your behalf. What makes it useful is where its answers come from. When you ask it a question, it pulls from two places b

I recently traveled to the Matter Career Readiness Institute (MCRI) in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to teach a macOS fundamentals and essential skills workshop alongside my teammate, Tyler Davis. MCRI's mission is to train students for jobs in the tech industry and create opportunities for those who might not otherwise have a clear path forward.We knew the students had potential before we arrived. Our MCRI intern, Anita, had just joined us full-time as a Client Platform Associate,* and hiring her was undoubtedly one of the best decisions our team has made. While I didn't expect the whole class to be like Anita, I had a feeling I'd catch glimpses of her intellect and drive in them.When we walked into the room, everyone was focused and ready to begin. As a woman in tech who spent the earlier years of her career struggling to be taken seriously and have her voice heard, seeing them all genuinely eager to listen was a full circle moment. Part of why I cofounded the Women in Tech Apple Admins g

If we want to use Jamf’s built-in Patch Management notifications to let clients know about new patches as they become available in Self Service, they will receive a notification for each patch title as their Macs come into scope for each patch policy. That’s not really a big deal if we only push out one or two patches at a time, but say after Patch Tuesday… yikes! That can easily result in a string of notifications which can get pretty annoying. Additionally, there may be situations where notifications do not behave as we would expect, such as with PI104511, which can result in Self Service notifications not consistently appearing in the Notification Center when they are scheduled to do so, resulting in unpatched apps quitting unexpectedly when they reach their install deadline. This is where we found ourselves and why we built our own patch notification workflow. It leverages jamfHelper and a Smart Computer Group to send our clients one notification each day while patches are availabl

Mac Apps, App Installers, Jamf Apps, Jamf App Catalog… whatever name you know it by, the feature found in your Jamf Pro server at Computers – Mac apps – Jamf App Catalog is a great tool for deploying and patching many commonly used Apps which aren’t available through Apple’s App Store. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to them as App Installers for the remainder of this post. App Installers do have some caveats which are documented here. Being aware of those is well and good, but even the most experienced admins can make mistakes. Jamf Pro will not alert you if you have done something like overlapped scopes for different deployments of the same App Installer title.If this occurs, that App Installer will likely cease to recalculate its deployment as more Macs are added to the Computer Group it is scoped to. If you toggle the “stuck” app’s deployment off and back on again, it’ll force it to recalculate and the Macs it was missing will begin to receive it.This overlapping scope behavi

When I first learned about Jamf Setup Checklist, I didn't view it as merely an optional companion to Setup Manager. In my mind, this was the rare movie sequel that genuinely had a clear, critical purpose.Setup Checklist was something our users needed. Something our technicians needed. And frankly, something I needed.🤔 Imagine this scenario…💻 Your user receives a brand-new MacBook Pro.The user opens the lid, glides through the beautiful Setup Manager workflow, and waits patiently as Jamf Pro onboards the Mac.⏰ 30 minutes pass. The Mac reaches the Desktop. The user is excited and ready to be productive on day one.So, they try to open Outlook. Error: No Internet connection.Okay… so they try to open Safari. Error: No Internet connection.😰 Minnesota, we have a problem. Panic sets in. What’s the Help Desk number again?Because this user is tech-savvy, instead of immediately calling support, they double-check the Wi-Fi connection and try the classic fix: toggling Wi-Fi off and on. Safari st

Microsoft has announced plans to move storage of the Workplace Join Key out of the user’s Login Keychain and into Apple’s Secure Enclave:    Microsoft Enterprise SSO plug-in for Apple devices - Microsoft identity platform    Announced in March 2024, Microsoft Entra ID will be moving away from Apple’s Keychain for storing device identity keys. Starting in Q3 2025, all new device registrations will use Apple’s Secure Enclave. There will be no opt-out of this storage location.  Applications and MDM integrations that have a dependency on accessing Workplace Join keys via Keychain will need to start using MSAL and the Enterprise SSO plug-in to ensure compatibility with the Microsoft identity platform.    In the same document, Microsoft provides guidance on how to test the Secure Enclave today to ensure the change will be compatible with your environment when the change goes live:   If you would like to enable Secure Enclave based storage of

Written by Diane Meza The demand for skilled Apple IT professionals isn't slowing down. As more schools and businesses build their operations around macOS and iOS, they need people who know how to manage, secure, and support those devices at scale — and the talent pipeline hasn't kept pace.Mesa Community College is helping close that gap. Through the Maricopa Information Technology Institute (MITI), in partnership with Jamf, the college offers the Enterprise IT Professional Apple Technology course series: a hands-on iniative built to turn students into job-ready Apple IT professionals.Learning by doingUnder instructor Carl Cortez, students get more than lecture time. The initiative combines classroom instruction with real device management experience, covering how to work with macOS and iOS and how to manage them in both business and education environments. Along the way, students earn Jamf 100, Jamf 170, and Jamf 200 certifications, credentials that carry weight with employers already