Casper Suite 8.0 Release This Week

[zach]

Hello everyone, and thanks for the great segue for this announcement!

Casper Suite 8.0 will be shipping this week! Everybody should be getting an email with information by the end of the day on Friday. If you don't receive an email by then, or have pressing needs to upgrade sooner, please send an email to:

support at jamfsoftware.com

We'll be happy to get the information to you as soon as possible.

The primary focus of 8.0 is related to Mobile Device Management (MDM). The JSS can now fully manage for all of your iOS devices in addition to your OS X clients. Some of the highlights include:

- Automatic inventory of mobile devices on a customizable schedule.
- Create, edit and assign scope for Configuration Profiles
- Send remote lock, remove passcode, and remote wipe commands to devices. The new version of JSS Mobile also allows you to send these commands.
- The Self Service web clip allows end users to install in-house apps that are developed by your organization, or find App Store apps that your organization recommends. - The Self Service web clip also allows you to highlight App Store apps for your users. Institutions that are part of Apple's Volume Purchase Program can allow users to redeem VPP codes through this interface.
- The JSS can integrate with the existing certificate authority and SCEP server in your environment, or, if you don't have these, the JSS can act as both.

For a full list of new features, bug fixes and upgrade instructions, please reference the release notes and documentation in the disk image.

regards,
zach

[ktrampe]

Great work on 8 guys!

Migration was quick and easy! Now I've got to find some time to dabble with the "shiny new stuff". :)

Cheers,
Kery

[bentoms]

Wow speedy.

Let us know what works & what doesn't. :)

Regards,

Ben.

[#4]

Kerry

Straight to production or into a test environment? How many devices? Any
issues? Red flags?

Thanks!
Steve

[RobertHammen]

Not Kerry but I upgraded one of the sites I manage (not a real hard-core environment) of 96 Macs and a handful of PC/Recon users. No big issues so far (SSL certificate needs to be reinstalled), about 93 of the 96 Macs have been undergone the client upgrade. Need to rebuild the Windows .MSI and deploy via Group Policy (after testing).
On Dec 2, 2010, at 9:41 AM, Flanagan, Steve wrote:

Before I upgraded, I used Composer to build a .dmg of the updated (8.0) Self Service. Added that into the JSS via Casper Admin, disabled my "Update Self Service" policy (All Managed Clients/Servers, run once, triggered by every5) then updated the policy to have the new .dmg. The policy also contains a script which:

a) kills Self Service if it's open
b) deletes Self Service.app from Applications if it's there (bad things happen if you just install "over the top" of some apps - you end up with a hybrid).

After upgrading the JSS I flushed the policy history, then enabled the policy, and within half an hour the majority of users had the new Self Service as well.

Besides the MDM stuff, I did notice that the "Details" view of a computer has been redesigned. The "What's New" also talks about moving of some things (Casper Admin via the browser is now under Settings, there's a new Servers tab under there as well).

Looking forward to getting my feet wet with MDM once I get the updated activation code for this site's iOS devices...

--Robert

[ktrampe]

Hi Steve,

Yes, straight to production. 1200 devices. Minor certificate issues, quickly resolved.

No red flags yet, things have been remarkably smooth.

Good luck!
Kerry

[tlarkin]

Does anyone have a compiled list of added features and more importantly fixes and improvements of version 8? I may have to ask Jamf this one. I am trying to fix our intermittent Self Service connection issues we are still seeing.