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Changing Self Service Notifications From Banners to Alerts

  • May 5, 2018
  • 4 replies
  • 35 views
dennisnardi
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I'd like for when a new action from Self Service becomes available to my users to have the notification be an "Alert" so it doesn't go away until dismissed, or at least last significantly longer than the 5 second default. Currently the default for Self Service notifications (labeled Management Action in the Notification Preferences) is the "Banners" style notification. I've been unable to figure out a way to successfully change it to an Alert (in a non manual fashion), or even extend the banners' displayed time.

I read through this post: https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/10056/change-notification-center-alert-duration and nothing there worked for me.

The python script no longer works. I created a custom plist/config profile, but it did not work on my machines. I tried manually editing my plist file to show the correct flag (86) for an alert under the Management Action entry, but still no alert showed up, only a banner. When I logged out and logged back in, the flag was reset to the banner number (78).

I tried extending the amount of time banners are shown before disappearing by running "defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime 15" from terminal, and verified it changed the setting in my plist, but all notifications from Self Service and other apps still only appear for 5 seconds.

My other option would be to create a jamfhelper message and scope it out to the correct groups to alert them of new Self Service Items. This seems kind of clunky though. Anyone have any thoughts?

4 replies

mm2270
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  • mm2270
  • Legendary Contributor
  • May 5, 2018

Other than Jamf changing how the Management Action.app Notification Center product works on their end, the only option I know of is to use a different product for persistent Notification Center messages. One such 3rd party product is Yo, from Shea Craig.
I've deployed a custom built version of Yo to our Macs that I can call with a script to get a banner message to appear on screen. You can choose to have an "action" button that does something when clicked in these banner messages, or just a default OK button if you don't need that.
I would encourage you to look at that and see if it fits your needs. I think it might.

S
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  • sbirdsley
  • Contributor
  • May 7, 2018

Would jamfHelper be a viable solution for your needs?

I know I use this tool to in situations I want to ensure a user is aware/notified of something being done on or to their systems. With the tool you can customize timeout periods and configure user actions to process specific tasks or not

dennisnardi
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  • dennisnardi
  • Author
  • Jamf Heroes
  • May 7, 2018

Jamfhelper is likely the route I'll be going. I'm familiar with it, and it'll be easy enough to setup. I just didn't know if there was something I was missing, where the alert style notification could be used.

C
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  • c_archibald
  • Valued Contributor
  • May 7, 2018

We created one using JAMFHelper.app that asks the user to manually accept the MDM Cert as 10.12 works w/ no user interaction, but 10.13 requires it. In the Policy under "Files & Processes" in "Execute Command" You can put in what you want, like:

/Library/Application Support/JAMF/bin/jamfHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/jamfHelper -windowType hud -title "Mobile Device Notification" -alHeading center -heading "Important Announcement" -description "It has been detected you have not accepted Your Mobile Device Management Profile. This is required to properly keep your computer secure and updated. Please open System Preferences, select Profiles, in the left pane click on the profile named MDM Profile. In the right pane at the top locate the button and click "Approve"." -alignDescription left -button1 "OK" -defaultButton 1

Scoped it in a Smart Group that checks for OS like 10.13, MDM Compatability (Yes), & User Approved Enrollment (Yes) .

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