Apple Software Updates - SmartGroup Criteria or Extension Attribute?

[corbinmharris]

Our Self Service app provides the option for users to check for Apple updates on our SUS. With the latest round of security updates, I had queries from our users asking how can they confirm the updates were installed (um, your Mac restarted??). I would like to scope Macs that have impending Apple software updates (if any) as it is shown in the computer's inventory report in JSS.

The Install OS X Updates policy would then show up in Self Service and a second policy would show No OS X Updates Available for the Macs that do not need updates installed.

Please let me know if there is an extension or the best criteria to use to create a smart to report Macs that have pending Software Updates from SUS.

Thanks! Corbin

[corbinmharris]

As most times, I answered my own question, the criteria is "Number of Available Updates"

Thanks for reading.

Corbin

[jennifer]

I use a smart group to show which machines have software updates remaining.

You could use that to scope your update policy.

[RobertHammen]

Users can also look in System Information, generate a System Report, Software, Installations and sort by date to see what was installed on their system, and when:

[Kaltsas]

Second @jennifer_unger I just have a smart group that checks for Software Updates more than 0 and scopes an update button for them in self service.

I do like the idea of No OS X Updates Available. I'm going to scope a second group to put that little notification in self service.

[jennifer]

@RobertHammen Okay, I'll admit, I'm a little mad at myself for not knowing about that list.

I don't suppose you have a good way of grabbing that from remote computers (preferably in that easy to read format you pictured above).

[RobertHammen]

cat /var/log/install.log

Not sure if there's a way to do it via system_profiler... haven't tried.

[Chris_Hafner]

Question. Any reason why the user shouldn't be encouraged to just open up the Mac App Store and check updates? With the exception of Yosemite the presented updates will honor your SUS. I prefer to make our offerings to our users via Self-Service yet we've moved to pointing our users in the direction of the MAS as they're constantly being pointed there by Apple marketing efforts anyways.

IN any event, we've used the "Any updates more than 0" methods mentioned and they worked quite well. I still use them for tracking the state of our departments updates.

[corbinmharris]

We try to encourage our customers to use our self service portal, it cuts down on confusion, plus we don't have VPP setup (yet).

With OS X updates scoped to Smart Groups the customer can easily determine if there are OS X updates available or not to install on their own. I do this for all our app updates as well. The built-in Self Service notifications doesn't provide a quick-look of updates available.

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[Chris_Hafner]

Makes perfect sense to me. I always try to follow @mm2270 as he keeps poking around with notifications.