Broken Notification Center Notifications?

[wildfrog]

Has anyone else run into issues where macOS users no longer receive Notification Center notifications from Jamf patch management events? For a long time this worked fine. I'd update an app via JPS patch management, and the user would get a Notification Center notice when each new update was available and the SS dock icon would show the number of ready updates in the red badge. But here lately neither of those happen. No Notification Center notices when a new update is ready and red badge only shows on the SS dock icon when the SS app is running.

Details. . .
Jamf Pro 10.8.0
Push Certs are current
Self Service settings for macOS has "Enable Self Service Notifications" checked.
I worked a ticket with Jamf support but they kind of threw up their hands and said "yep, seeing some inconsistencies with this" and assigned it a PI number (PI-005955).
Anything else I should be looking at? I mean I feel like this is pretty important since how else will my users know when they have updates to do? Yes, I could probably do a postflight script using Yo to notify but I'd really prefer the built in functionality working as advertised.

[thegooch49]

I'm running up against the same problem. I submitted a case, and received the same PI-005955. I'm on JPS 10.9.0 (cloud hosted). Push Certs are new. So I can tell you that 10.9.0 doesn't seem to be a fix here.

[wildfrog]

Yeah, I updated to get the PPPC payload capability and was hoping doing so would fix it. Not so much.
At this point I’m feeling like I have to give JamJar a long hard look.

[bearzooka]

Just bumping this, because year and a half later, running JAMF Pro version 10.21, we still don't get notifications.

[Surajit]

There is a PI-005955: inconsistent notifications for policies.
You may want to open a case with Jamf support.

[bearzooka]

Yeah, I reached this post from searching for PI-005955 and have a case in which I was recommended a workaround involving the Management Action tool. A bit disappointing, I may say.

[hodgesji]

We get no notifications at all from Patch Policies, although we do from regular Policies. This has been an ongoing issue for us and very disappointing when functionality that we pay for doesn't work!

[robertliebsch]

There is not much activity here if this is a pervasive issue. I'm just finding that Notifications for Patch Policies are not being sent daily as configured. I'm cloud based on 10.26.

[johnmcnair]

We are running into the same issue.

Jamf Pro 10.26.1

[dtommey]

We've been experiencing this issue since Jamf Pro 10.8. Raised the issue over 2 years ago and still nothing.

[Michael_vogel]

Ran into this issue. Opened a JAMF support case. They told me it's known and gave me a workaround to make an attached policy to every patch policy. That's basically unacceptable. Hopefully they fix this soon because it's a pretty big deal.

[jmuchow]

I just opened a Jamf Support Case on this ongoing problem. I was given the same "runaround/workaround" and referred to product issue PI-005955. This has now gone unresolved for two and a half years which leads me to conclude that Jamf has mistakenly relegated it to low priority which is perplexing given that patch management is a critical component and Self Service is the "customer facing" Jamf Pro app. We are running the latest 10.30.3 cloud based instance of Jamf Pro. 

[Atmos]

I'm also dealing with this now. Guess I'll open a case to maybe increase the awareness. 

[timdambrosio]

We managed several Jamf instances all configured the same and this same PI affects all of them.   What exactly does Jamf mean by attach a policy to a patch policy?  I know how to use the management action to notify something but how is that meant to tie in to patching?

[edgar]

Still experiencing this issue under PI-005955. I was told about the Management Action workaround but not sure why it's taking so long to put out a fix. I reported this back in mid-May and was told would be fixed by 10.30 cloud based instance of Jamf Pro.

[wildfrog]

What's frustrating (to me) is the fact that while my users get no Notification Center notifications letting them know a new version of a given app is available, the notifications telling them they have 15 minutes before Jamf steps in and forces the update those notifications work just fine. Ultimately, I gave up on the notifications built into Self Service delivery of patches. 

For a while, I used terminal-notifier but it sort of got to its end. Then DataJar came out with their Notifier - which seems like re-working terminal-notifier in Swift. It looks really nice, but I don't know Xcode well enough to recompile it with my desired branding. It can be found at https://github.com/dataJAR/Notifier

The workflow I'm using now is a policy that calls a script leveraging Jamf Helper to put up a dialog box letting the user know there are new updates in Self Service - which the user must then click "OK" to acknowledge & close the dialog. I have the policy set to run once per computer on recurring checkin. Each time I add new updates, I flush the logs on that policy so that the dialog appears again.

It's not as pretty or elegant as I'd like, but it's better than the update deadline sneaking up on people and having Jamf force-close/update their apps with only a 15 minute warning.

I did see that there are some JNUC sessions discussing IBM Notifier. I'll be interested to see how it differs from DataJar's iteration.

[glpi-ios]

Hi.

Same issue and the same "runaround/workaround" given by JAMF support 😞 
Jamf Cloud 10.32.2

We just ran more tests and wanted to share the results with you.

We have a JSS test instance identical to the production instance.
When we prepare a MacOS workstation, that we enroll it on the test instance, the notifications work and as soon as we enroll the computer in the production JSS, we no longer have notifications at the MacOS notification center. .

However, we have the same configuration profiles and the same JSS settings.
To ensure this, we deleted the configuration profiles on the test instance and we imported the configuration profiles from the production instance to the test instance.
Always the same result.

On the other hand, I don't know if this has to do with the notification problem, we noticed that each time we make available a policy with notification, on the workstations in scope, in the log file "selfservice_debug.log" , there is a mention of new notifications from policies that no longer exist in our JSS.
I am sending you as an attachment a capture of the part of the log file containing this information. I have framed you in red, the policies no longer exist in our JSS and in green, the good test policy made available to self-service with notifications.

We do not have this behavior with the test JSS.

We have tried to:
- delete the self service application, delete the ~ / Library / Caches / com.jamfsoftware.selfservice.mac folder
- Uninstall the Self Service app
- Delete the com.jamfsoftware.mac plist from ~ / Library / Application \ Support /
- In Keychain Access, remove the Self Service public and private key

But these "phantom" policies occur again in the "selfservice_debug.log" log file each time new policies are made available in the self service in the production instance.

I don't know if this has anything to do with our notifications issue but I share this with you.

Thanks

[wildfrog]

That's really interesting. What I found odd - and that Jamf support could not explain - is that the built-in notifications letting users know about available updates don't work reliably. BUT. . .the notifications letting users know that they have 15 minutes before Jamf steps in forces the update - those notifications work reliably and without fail.

[tender]

I have the same issue with notification center not working. Notifications do show up in self service but that is not useful because people do not always use that. So for me, patch management is kind of broken. I have an open support case, waiting to hear back with next steps.

[glpi-ios]

Hello everybody,

Still no solution found?
It becomes very annoying.

Thank you,

[wildfrog]

@glpi-ios For now, I'm still using the workaround where I use Jamf Helper to put up an alert dialog letting users know I've made app updates available in Self Service. But I'm in the process of moving as much of my patch management workflow as possible to Installomator. And, oddly enough, those notifications seem to work. So I'm sort of thinking the problem is more with Self Service than with Notifications, as such.

[glpi-ios]

hi @wildfrog 

Thank you for your answer.
Indeed, if the notifications work with Installomator, this shows that the problem comes from Jamf.
We can only hope that the solution is found quickly...

Thank you

[wildfrog]

Well. . .like I mentioned earlier, some notifications from Self Service seem to work consistently for me - the ones letting the user know they're up against the install deadline. But the notifications alerting to availability seem to be a problem. So yes. . .the problem comes from Jamf, but it seems more specifically from that particular function of the Self Service app itself.

[WoodyG]

I also have been dealing with this issue, put in a trouble ticket, got the same answer, "PI-005955." At one time it worked and broke a little over a year ago. I moved my patching back to regular policies because those notifications work. That has its challenges too. Today I went into my notification preference pane and was checking the settings and maybe had a eureka moment?! I renamed my "Self-Service" app. I'm wondering if others on this comment thread have done the same?

[hodgesji]

Were you suggesting that if you changed the Self Service app name or path it would have been broken? If so, we are using the default Self Service.app and still have broken notifications. 

[WoodyG]

Yes, that's what I was suggesting (wondering if it) could possibly be the cause. This is very frustrating. Thanks for the feedback.

[edgar]

This is still an issue, 3 years+ later....

[bearzooka]

Maybe we should start having a birthday cake for this issue.

[asadenton]

Hi folks, 

I am seeing this issue on just a few of my machines, Jamf Pro cloud. I was not able to find the referenced article/ticket PI-005955. Can someone link me?

[wildfrog]

I wish I had something to add. I moved on to other workflows for app patch management and haven't thought about this for a very long time.

[ivanpiesh]

"Ensure that users view the description - Force users to view the description before the policy runs" does NOT work in Sonoma when running policies from Self Service. Anyone else?

[wildfrog]

@ivanpiesh Working for me. Jamf Pro 11.0.1. My M2 MacBook Air is at 14.0.

[PatrickZenker]

From this blog

In Jamf, go to Configuration Profiles > New. Fill in the usual stuff you would in General.

Then, go to Application & Custom Settings, and select External Applications.

Click Add.

Under Source, select Custom Schema.

For Preference Domain, put in com.apple.notificationsettings.

For Custom Schema, paste in Joshua D. Miller’s .json.

Click Save, and then click Edit.

For Notification Settings, select Configured. Then click Add Value.

You can then select various options for your application (Alert Type, Use Badges on App Icon, Enable Notifications, etc.). Select what you want, but also be sure to fill in Application Identifier, which you can find in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ncprefs.plist. For example, for Munki, this would be com.googlecode.munki.ManagedSoftwareCenter.

{
	"title": "Notification Settings",
	"description": "Preference Domain: com.apple.notificationsettings",
	"__version": "1.0",
	"__feedback": "josh@psu.edu",
	"type": "object",
	"options": {
		"remove_empty_properties": true
	},
	"definitions": {
		"policy_group": {
			"type": "object",
			"format": "grid",
			"options": {
				"collapsed": true,
				"disable_properties": true
			}
		}
	},
	"properties": {
        "NotificationSettings": {
            "title": "Notification Settings",
			"description": "Configure Notification Settings for macOS Applications in Catalina (10.15) or higher",
			"anyOf": [
                {
					"type": "null",
					"title": "Not Configured"
				},
				{
					"title": "Configured",
					"type": "array",
					"items": {
                        "type": "object",
						"title": "Application",
						"properties": {
                            "AlertType": {
                                "type": "integer",
                                "title": "Alert Type",
                                "enum": [0, 1, 2],
								"options": {
									"enum_titles": ["None", "Banners", "Alerts"]
								}
                            },
                            "BadgesEnabled": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Use Badges on App Icon",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            },
                            "BundleIdentifier": {
                                "type": "string",
                                "title": "Application Identifier",
                                "description": "The bundle identifier of the application"
                            },
                            "CriticalAlertsEnabled": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Critical Alerts",
                                "descriptions": "Display Critical Alerts",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            },
                            "NotificationsEnabled": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Enable Notifications",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            },
                            "ShowInLockScreen": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Show Notifications on Lock Screen",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            },
                            "ShowInNotificationCenter": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Display Notifications in Notification Center",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            },
                            "SoundsEnabled": {
                                "type": "boolean",
                                "title": "Play sound when notification arrives",
                                "enum": [false, true],
                                "default": false,
                                "options": {
                                    "enum_titles": ["No", "Yes"]
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }]
        }
    }
}