Product Office Hours #7 - JNUC Keynote Recap Q&A *Q&A in thread*

When can we expect to see the new Blueprints features that were shown off at JNUC (device status reporting, Declarations section in inventory records, additional criteria options in activation conditions, etc.)? 

Will any of these be added separately from a Jamf Pro version upgrade? 

1️⃣ If you just inherited my Jamf instance, how would you get started on transitioning from configuration profiles to Blueprints?

2️⃣ We’ve used Jamf Compliance Editor for years. With the switch to Blueprints, is this app dead? Thoughts on using it for Apple OS 27 Baselines? Yes, we use the Compliance section in Jamf Pro, but just for monitoring.

3️⃣ Just a comment. Jamf Device Checker iOS app is awesome. Took me 15 min to configure and deploy. Very useful for mobile devices. 👏🏻 Nice one to Aaron Maxim and Adam Derrick!

​@mvu Thank You so much for the shout out! We put a lot of hard work into Device Checker especially the wizard so super excited to see how you use the app! 

​@aderrick Ah, thank you! And great presentation at JNUC.

Honestly, I want to use something like this on my personal phone. Apple should build something like this.

I think it’s a nice central place to check OS and app updates, get battery and storage info, etc. The WiFi/cellular info is very useful for our network team, and I see many use cases for our tier 1 staff.

Nice job on the log sharing button.

Overally, love the interface, GUI, and branding. Gives the user nice feedback.

Some resources just landed for people in this situation!

• Customer Education - Jamf Short "Video: How and Why to Switch to Declarative Device Management"
• Technical Communications - Declarative Device Management Migration Guide

Darn it...I missed this one. I just subscribed for Product Office Hours.

Featuring, Beth Tschida! This session was a JNUC keynote recap and Q&A, with Matt Benyo (Director, Software Engineering) and Tim Knox (Senior Consulting Engineer, Industry Solutions). Here's every question asked during the session, pulled from both the live Q&A and the chat. 

Surprise guest – Beth Tschida was asked: What are you most excited about coming in the next 3 to 6 months, and what keeps you up at night? Most exciting: getting things into people's hands sooner rather than waiting for the perfect solution later. A lot of what got shown at JNUC is genuinely new, and holding onto it until it feels fully polished means missing out on the community's input while building it. What keeps the team up at night is the balance between moving fast and moving assured you're doing the right things, and the next 3 to 6 months should be exciting on both fronts: getting new things into your hands, then continuing to iterate. Progress, not perfection. 

Matt & Tim: 

Are Routines still going to be device-count limited? Yes, the limit will follow whatever your SKU already allows for Jamf for Mac or Jamf for Mobile, there's still a minimum tied to licensing. 

When is Jamf Routines going to be available, and is it part of the Mac SKU specifically? Private beta is happening this month (October), with general availability targeted for around January. Access requires either the Jamf for Mac, Jamf for Mobile or Jamf for K12 bundle, it won't be available on Pro alone. 

Are Routines coming to EDU customers? Yes. 

Will custom integrations be allowed, similar to n8n? Yes. Anything that's an HTTP endpoint or webhook is easy to set up, and you'll be able to create or contribute custom nodes and connectors. For anything missing, there'll be a way to request it and get it prioritized. You also don't need a connector to already exist to start using the service, it just takes a bit more manual setup in the meantime. For now, n8n's integrations list is a good reference for what kinds of connectors are possible. 

Where will announcements on Routines beta availability be shared? The Jamf Nation forums. 

Where does Jamf Routines fall on the priority list for FedCloud approval, relative to Jamf Protect next year? Since Routines is being actively built this month, it's likely to land sooner than FedRAMP approval timelines generally run. On getting Routines specifically approved for FedCloud, the team has only just started looking into it, so there's no firm date yet, but it is a priority, with a rough target of within about 6 months of FedCloud's own launch. 

Do we see Device Checker coming to Mac in a future iteration? Not currently planned. Jamf already has much better tools for keeping Macs up to date than relying on a user to open an app and check, that gap is really a mobile-specific problem. (Device Health/Vitals is the more relevant Mac-side tool for this kind of visibility.) 

We block the App Store in K-12. Will Device Checker help us know when an app needs an update? Yes, it will. The one limitation is that someone still has to open the app themselves, there's no push notification yet to prompt that. It's designed more for a "check before you start" moment, so it could work well as something staff run through at the start of a shift or school day. 

Can Device Checker be used to enforce updates via Single App Mode, and for Jamf TAP, does the first login require a password? On Device Checker: yes, fully achievable. Set a smart group for devices that don't meet a requirement, drop those into Single App Mode via Device Checker, and once the device updates, it's automatically excluded from both the smart group and Single App Mode. This is already in production with a couple of airlines, pilots are required to check their electronic flight bag app before takeoff to meet FAA requirements, and it could work well for other industries too, retail was mentioned as a good candidate. On TAP: there's a definable timeout for linking a user identity to a badge. You can require full authentication on the first tap of the day, then allow single taps for the rest of the shift, with the association expiring at the end of it, or make it persistent if that suits your security requirements better. 

You're removing SwiftConnect from the security cloud. Any plan to replace it for physical badge access? No concrete plan yet. SwiftConnect was a solid solution on paper, but adoption was very low, reportedly only two customers used it, so it's not being carried forward as-is. If you have a real use case for it, flagging that to the team is worth doing. 

For mobile UEM integration, is there any plan to support exceptions based on user groups rather than device groups? Device groups get messy fast since device IDs change on re-enrollment. You should already be able to scope based on LDAP or user groups in Jamf to limit things to a specific group of users, this looks achievable with what's available today. Worth following up directly to confirm it covers your specific workflow. 

Can Jamf Device Checker notify the help desk when someone's having an issue, and can the help desk remote into the device to resolve it? You can send logs from the app and add a link out to your help desk, but there's no remote-into-device capability yet (this is something the team would also like to see). A webhook triggered off a smart group was suggested as a possible workaround in the meantime. 

Regarding FedCloud: is it still launching today, and is it true devices won't need to be wiped and re-enrolled to migrate? As long as you're on OS 26 or 27, you shouldn't need to wipe to migrate (see Apple's documentation on device migration via Apple Business Manager). As for a same-day launch, nothing on Jamf's site was pointing to that happening today. One real-world caution shared by the community: some environments using the new ABM migration deadline are seeing roughly a 10% failure rate requiring a wipe, so moving carefully with any migration effort is worth it, that said, 10% is still far better than the 100% wipe previously required. 

What's the data retention timeline for the new device metrics/health data? Most DEX solutions cap at 30 days, will this let the org decide? The current default plan is to hold up to 90 days. Retention options for customers to adjust that further are likely to come at some point. 

When will device health data be available in production? Targeting beta sometime in Q1. 

If a Mac is deleted from Jamf Pro, does its historical device health data get wiped too? Not something that's been fully settled yet, this is being logged as an open question. The instinct is that it should probably persist, possibly with a manual option to delete it if needed, since deleting a computer from Jamf Pro often also wipes its Jamf Protect history today, and that's not necessarily desirable for health data. 

Is there a way to view device performance data for a specific group, for example, checking whether MacBook Airs have enough memory for their assigned role? Yes, this is one of the core internal use cases already being tested: building representative groups by role (business traveler, systems administrator, engineering, media, etc.), deploying to a representative sample, letting it run for about a week, then checking real performance data like memory and CPU usage against the role's needs. It's already surfaced concrete findings internally, for example, confirming an engineering build needed more memory based on actual usage data rather than guesswork.