Building and Department not sticking on mobile device

@chet.bishop do you have "Collect user and location information from LDAP" turned on in Settings -> Mobile Device Management -> Inventory Collection? If you do, and you don't have those fields populated in your LDAP server it will delete out the information you are manually entering. At least that has been my experience. I had to turn this off since our LDAP server isn't being properly maintained with correct information.

We were running into this issue as well. We even changed out LDAP mappings to not point to any field in AD but it still cleared out those two fields.

I spoke with our rep and he said, "I've confirmed that the JSS now overwrites the department field with a blank value regardless of wether or not the department object is mapped in our LDAP settings".

We are running JSS 9.91 so this may be changed in a later version.

Thanks for the replies! We are running 9.92 here and it has just been mind numbing to try and figure this out. Hopefully it's fixed in 9.93.

@chet.bishop I'd check with your TAM about the specific defect number it's filed under. I don't remember reading anything in the release notes about this issue. So it probably isn't resolved in 9.93.

Hey all,

This is expected behavior when the inventory option of “Collect user and location information from LDAP” is checked.

It’s doing exactly what it’s being told when that option is selected, it’s updating the user & location information from LDAP and overwriting anything else that was manually put in there.

Even if the LDAP mappings are pointed toward something blank, it will overwrite because the information the JSS is receiving from AD is blank.

If you’re wanting to or need to populate those fields manually, you’ll need to uncheck the “Collect user and location information from LDAP” box in Mobile Device Management -> Inventory Collection and/or Computer Management -> Inventory Collection.

This is by design, and has been so throughout the JSS 9 series; it’s not likely to be changed, and is not considered to be unexpected behavior or a product issue, but please feel free to make a Feature Request if you’d like to do so just to get the idea out there.

There is not a viable way to both have that option checked and manually enter user and location information; it will be overwritten with the information from LDAP every time the device checks in. If the LDAP environment is updated to reflect the desired information for the fields that you've been manually entering, it will then pull the correct information from LDAP.

If you’re seeing this behavior and “Collect user and location information from LDAP” is NOT checked in your inventory collection preferences, please get in touch with your TAM as something else is likely going on.

Thanks!
Amanda Wulff
JAMF Support

Thanks Amanda! Saving me a headache.

@chet.bishop

No problem! :)

It's a really easy setting to overlook & set of circumstances to overlook, especially since most JSSes have their inventory preferences set up at the time the JSS was initially set up and they're not often looked at again following that.

The first time I ran into the behavior, it confused me for a good two days before I figured out what was happening. It's the first thing I check for now!

Amanda Wulff
JAMF Support

If the mapping is configured to NOT collect data from AD, then that field should be considered as NOT collected and blank data should not be sent to the JSS. The way it has been designed makes many not able to use a useful feature, or for those that do use it to not be able to use Buildings and Departments due to an LDAP we have no control over cleaning up.

There are at least two FRs:
Casper Automated LDAP Query - Allow Configuration of Fields Queried
Do not overwrite User and Location data if LDAP mapping not configured