I'm looking to start a discussion on creative ways to manage user's login experience. Just curious - How do you manage your Mac's Login Items such as Network drives and Printers?
I'm currently not a JAMF Casper Suite customer (yet), but hopefully will be in spring 2015.
I currently have ~300 Macs. I am (still) using the Golden Triangle paradigm of AD/OD/MCX to manage my Macs. The primary things I manage are the distribution of network drive & printer mapping to Macs as Login Items via MCX. MCX and Workgroup Manager are deprecated and I'd like to decommission my OD infrastructure this year.
A current "Real world" example of my Mac environment:
Jonny Appleseed is in Department A. His user ID and groups live in AD. His Mac computer object lives in both AD and OD. His AD groups are nested into OD groups as well. Basic "Golden Triangle" scenario here.
Jonny Appleseed logs into his iMac. Jonny automatically gets a couple common/shared/collaborative SMB network drives as well as a specific SMB drive for Department A staff. Likewise, Jonny also gets the HP network printers for Department A too. Kerberos SSO helps with the seamless mounting of SMB network drives. Our printers do not require authentication.
Worth mentioning that I don't currently use the AD network UNC home attribute. I don't use 3rd-party tools such as Centrify or Likewise.
This paradigm described above worked well for me over the years - but alas it will be going away in 2015.
Do you guys 'n gals use MDM-style Profiles for this type of login script management? Ad hoc shell scripts perhaps? Can you leverage Casper Suite for this of type of login script management?
My goal (per my CIO's direction) has always been to mimic the behavior of our 900 Windows PCs (i.e.; no matter what platform an employees prefers, her/she will have automatic access to their SMB network drives and printers at login - period). Obviously, Network drive & printer mapping is handled on Windows via tried & true AD GPO policies. I'd like to maintain a similar management structure on the OS X side of the house (without OD/MCX/WGM of course.)
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this matter. I appreciate your feedback.