Hello,
I am trying to build a Custom Default Dock within El Capitan that would be presented to all networked Active Directory users when logging into a lab environment. I have read many posts on this and other forums regarding this and have gathered quite a bit a great, useful information.
We do not work with local accounts, nor networked home directories. A user’s home directory is built on the fly when logging in with Active Directory. The home directory is then erased when the user logs out. Previously I would build a Custom Dock within a Default User Profile and copy the Dock.plist to the User Templates folder.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far. Each one comes close to what I want to accomplish, but doesn’t get me in the end-zone.
1. DockUtil: This works but there is, at minimum, a 7-10 second delay after login before the Dock is refreshed. This is not acceptable in our lab situation. I even attempted to put a Policy Message out asking for the user to wait for the refresh, but the message appears about 1 second before the refresh. I do like being able to create a separate dock for the admin account. I configured this in conjunction with 'Outset' (https://github.com/chilcote/outset)
2. JAMF’s Dock Configuration Profiles: These seem to be inconsistent, and once again needs to refresh after a user logs in before the default dock is presented to them.
3. DockMaster: I like DockMaster because it displays a custom default dock at login, but:
• DockMaster with Active Directory accounts does not seem to work. I’ve read that an AD attribute needs to be changed, but do not know what the attribute is, or if my AD Sys Admins will even allow for this change if requested. • DockMaster with a JSS Configuration Profile will build the static-doc apps at login but ignores everything in the ‘Others’ portion of the Dock.
4. I have even tried using the DockMaster packages within ‘Outset’ with no luck as of yet. I’m not sure if it just won’t work, or if I don’t have all of my packages loading in the correct order in my test configuration.
Something that I thought would be a fairly simply process has turned out to be much more. At this point I will use the DockMaster with JSS Configuration Profile because it gets me 90% of what I need. I’m not happy with that, but have dedicated days to this now and need to move on to getting my Configurations built and start deploying.
What other options do I have?
