Self Service Programs

In your Self Service policy for installing Firefox, what's the execution frequency set to?

Once per computer.

You are missing something in what you have. You go from having the policy and it appearing in Self Service to you removing Firefox. You don't say how Firefox got onto the station.

If you used the policy install Firefox and the policy is set to Once per Computer it will never appear again in Self Service until the Firefox policy log for that computer is flushed.

One option is to set the policy to continuous. This will mean that the computer can install it as many times as it wants as long as it is in the scope. In other words, once Firefox is removed from a station and the inventory is updated it will once again be a member of your Smart Group and Firefox should once again appear in Self Service.

Sorry, after it appeared in self service I installed Firefox. Than I uninstalled it.

If you switch it from once per computer to ongoing it never disappears from self service.

Once you install Firefox and it updated the inventory record it will be removed from your Smart Group and so Firefox should not appear in Self Service for that station. You can add the Update Inventory as part of the policy to force this immediately.

@strider.knh][/url][/url almost. Or, perhaps, it depends on your version of JSS. After... 9.5 I think, Selecting "update inventory" now runs an inventory check at a slightly later point in the background so as not to slow down the "install" in self service. If you want an inventory to run "immediately" after the install you need to add 'jamf recon' under 'execute command' in your policy to remove it from self service immediately.

@Chris_Hafner: Thanks, I had not realized that. In the past month we have gone from 9.4 to 9.5 to 9.6 so I am still finding those little differences.

There are many of those ;-) Overall I like the feature yet I tend to live by my smart groups and need them updated very very quickly so my users don't try re-installing something they just installed.

That said, @jnuc I learned of many different ways to get to the same point while simplifying our users experience. I'd love to get my hands on the 'Good Neighbor' scripts and processes from Jason Borchardt... that is, if his lawyers let him ;-)

Thank you for all of your help.

Still not quite where I want to be though. So all of these changes. Have caused the following: Firefox appears in self service if the computer does not have it. When you install Firefox it disappears from self service. If you uninstall Firefox it does not* reappear in self service.

*It reappears in self service the next time the computer runs inventory.

Currently we have inventory updating once a week. Do we need to change that to make self service work the way I want?

Yes if you want things to appear and disappear in Self Service based off of smart groups the only way to do that is to run inventory at the end of every job that could change a smart group. Realize though that every inventory takes up space in your database (I think)

That sounds like it is working exactly as expected with your settings. At my shop I have the inventory set to update daily.

I've also created an Update Inventory policy that is only triggered by Self Service. That way if I need the machine to recon it can be done by the user when prompted. It saves a lot of waiting if I'm not able to remote into the box immediately.

Size of the database can be an issue if you're a huge installation. I've got 650 concurrent OS X units under full management and a number of iOS devices (Always in flux). We have an inventory once a day and a checkin every 15 min. No issues at all and database performance is spectacular.

If you were really that deep into it you could have a process running to keep track of those things but that might be a little over the top. Do you have major issues with users uninstalling necessary programs such as Firefox? I'm just really curious to know what the deeper issue is?