Self Service availability

[dgarrigan]

Is there a way to force Macs to keep self service open and running?  Users tend to never open it thus never update their software.  We currently don't force anyone to do the updates, but it wouldn't matter if they never even open it up.  Adding it as a login item hasn't fixed this issue.  Any ideas?

[PaulHazelden]

You can try a LaunchAgent

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>UNIQUE NAME FOR AGENT</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/Self\ Service.app/Contents/MacOS/Self\ Service</string>
</array>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Save it as a plist, and put it in the /Library/LaunchAgents folder. Give it permissions of 644 and similar ownership as the rest of the Agents in there.
Every time you log in it will launch. And the Keep alive line will restart it if you quit it. But this will really annoy your users. There are other variables you can use instead.

[bwoods]

Your apps are going to stay out of date forever my friend. You need to force updates, just be more clever. Wait until the app is closed and update it then. 

[StefanT]

I might be mistaken here, since I am pretty new to jamf. But if you'd force an update, it wouldn't matter if they have self service open or not. It's just install on all systems that are in scope.