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Deploying Mac App Store apps to non-admin users with App Store restricted?

  • July 11, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 33 views

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Hi everyone,

We've been experiencing issues with consistency of deployments of Mac App Store apps to our users' laptops. Our users are standard/non-admin users, and in addition to that, we are restricting the usage of the App Store. What can we do to achieve reliable deployment of these apps?

Thanks!

Best answer by JureJerebic

We sound to have the same conditions (App Store blocked, deploying App Store Apps) and don't see any issues. We assign the app licence via Device Assignment and either deploy directly or show in self service. We are currently deploying large apps like Davinci Resolve in this way and students have had no issues. I know pressing the "Install" button in self service only triggers it to request the app - Its not as instant as a policy PKG deployment.

The only issue we have is students pressing install and expecting it to be instant - then they press it again and get a failed message. Looking at the jamf logs it just shows that the app has already been assigned or has failed to assign the licence to the device because it already has had that request.


I reached out to Jamf support and their recommendation for a solution was:

- if the user cannot install the app and gets the error that the App Store is restricted, you can try unscoping the app from the user's Mac, then re-scoping it again; and have the user try again a little bit later

This worked for us

3 replies

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  • Contributor
  • July 12, 2022

We sound to have the same conditions (App Store blocked, deploying App Store Apps) and don't see any issues. We assign the app licence via Device Assignment and either deploy directly or show in self service. We are currently deploying large apps like Davinci Resolve in this way and students have had no issues. I know pressing the "Install" button in self service only triggers it to request the app - Its not as instant as a policy PKG deployment.

The only issue we have is students pressing install and expecting it to be instant - then they press it again and get a failed message. Looking at the jamf logs it just shows that the app has already been assigned or has failed to assign the licence to the device because it already has had that request.


Forum|alt.badge.img+9
  • Author
  • Contributor
  • July 13, 2022

We sound to have the same conditions (App Store blocked, deploying App Store Apps) and don't see any issues. We assign the app licence via Device Assignment and either deploy directly or show in self service. We are currently deploying large apps like Davinci Resolve in this way and students have had no issues. I know pressing the "Install" button in self service only triggers it to request the app - Its not as instant as a policy PKG deployment.

The only issue we have is students pressing install and expecting it to be instant - then they press it again and get a failed message. Looking at the jamf logs it just shows that the app has already been assigned or has failed to assign the licence to the device because it already has had that request.


Thanks for that, yeah similar here. It was a few cases where the app wouldn't install and an error would be displayed that the user is not able to use the Mac App Store, but then after a few tries or a day later, the app would install. Seems inconsistent.


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  • Author
  • Contributor
  • Answer
  • July 15, 2022

We sound to have the same conditions (App Store blocked, deploying App Store Apps) and don't see any issues. We assign the app licence via Device Assignment and either deploy directly or show in self service. We are currently deploying large apps like Davinci Resolve in this way and students have had no issues. I know pressing the "Install" button in self service only triggers it to request the app - Its not as instant as a policy PKG deployment.

The only issue we have is students pressing install and expecting it to be instant - then they press it again and get a failed message. Looking at the jamf logs it just shows that the app has already been assigned or has failed to assign the licence to the device because it already has had that request.


I reached out to Jamf support and their recommendation for a solution was:

- if the user cannot install the app and gets the error that the App Store is restricted, you can try unscoping the app from the user's Mac, then re-scoping it again; and have the user try again a little bit later

This worked for us