CAASPP Test + Siri Issue

[zinkotheclown]

My district has been getting reports of students being unable to run the CAASPP (Smarter Balanced) online assessment test due to the "SiriNCService" being open.

We run 10.12 and 10.13 Macs.

To my knowledge, we don't enable Siri by default and despite pushing a config profile to make sure the com.apple.assistant.support.plist and com.apple.Siri.plist files enforce this, the Siri background process still runs and respawns the "SiriNCService" every couple of minutes.

The only way to fully disable the Siri launchd process is to go disable Siri or re-enable/disable Siri manually in System Preferences which is impractical as we disable access to the System Preference panes.

I'm just writing this to see if anyone else out there has experienced this and to see how you are dealing with this.

[ChadWagner]

Yup. I have the same issue. I have a support Ticket with CAASPP and they say I was the first to report the issue which was hard to believe. They do suggest manually re-enabling, then disabling as you suggest above where It seems to fix the issue, but impractical in scale. They also suggest disabling Siri and Dictation from Parental controls using Configuration Profiles although I have not yet given that a shot. This problem is elusive to me since we get 4 out of 30 randomly having the issue sometimes in the middle of the test.

[zinkotheclown]

@ChadWagner Yes this issue seems to be random and I don't know if it's the kids themselves trying to startup Siri during testing or Siri was enabled already.

Most of our sites block the Siri preference pane so they are unable to enable Siri there but let's say I have those plists disabling Siri and the pane is accessible, the students can still just attempt to tick the box and that is enough to activate the Siri background process. Also due to SIP and the inablilty to make the Siri.app unexecutable, if the student just clicks on the Siri.app in Applications or on the dock, that is also enough reason for that background process to start up.

[ChadWagner]

Okay. I ran the following for the user. In my case, I am using the Guest Account and applying these as a login script. Although you do not see these changes reflected in the System Preferences pane, they do seem to be working and we just ran about 300 students through CAASPP with great success. We had about 10 that still had a Siri issue and we walked them through enabling Siri and then Disabling Siri and that seemed to work for them. It is possible these few computers just had not yet gotten the policy update that would have fixed them automatically. I should note that this has only been tested on 10.13.x and a bit on 10.14.x, but nothing earlier. Well here is a snip of the script that I wrote:

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -e ~/.caaspp-prefs-written ]; then
    echo Prefs have not yet been written


    echo Setting Prefs for Expose and Mission Control
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool TRUE
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist "mru-spaces" -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

    echo Setting Prefs for Siri
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.assistant.support.plist "Assistant Enabled" -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.assistant.support.plist

    defaults delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.assistant.plist "Accounts"
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.assistant.plist

    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist "NSStatusItem Visible Siri" -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.siri.plist StatusMenuVisible -bool FALSE
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.siri.plist VoiceTriggerUserEnable -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.siri.plist

    echo Setting Prefs for Dictation
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs.plist DictationIMMasterDictationEnabled -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.recognition.AppleSpeechRecognition.prefs.plist DictationIMMasterDictationEnabled
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist AppleDictationAutoEnable -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs.plist SpokenUIUseSpeakingHotKeyFlag -bool FALSE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs.plist

    echo Setting Prefs for HotKeys
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 82 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 124, 8781824); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 81 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 124, 8650752); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 80 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 123, 8781824); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 118 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 18, 262144); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 32 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 126, 8650752); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 33 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 125, 8650752); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 34 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 126, 8781824); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 79 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 123, 8650752); type = 'standard'; }; }"

    echo More Settings for Mission Control
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 35 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 125, 8781824); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 36 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 103, 8388608); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 37 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 103, 8519680); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 45 "{enabled = 0; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 47 "{enabled = 0; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 48 "{enabled = 0; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 49 "{enabled = 0; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 62 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 111, 8388608); type = 'standard'; }; }"
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist AppleSymbolicHotKeys -dict-add 63 "{enabled = 0; value = { parameters = (65535, 111, 8519680); type = 'standard'; }; }"    

    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist "spans-displays" -bool TRUE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist

    echo Setting Prefs for Keyboard Functionkeys
    defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist "com.apple.trackpad.forceClick" -bool TRUE
    defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

    sleep 10

    killall cfprefsd
    killall Dock
    touch ~/.caaspp-prefs-written
  fi