Categories and Policies

[zmbarker]

I am looking for suggestions from the community to help determine how to best organize the JSS.

What do people use as a naming convention to keep track of all the policies? (SS = Self-Service; Auto = Automatic) SS - Firefox Install Auto - Firefox Install What kind of Categories are people using? How do you keep the Self-service items and Automatic policies organized?

Here are some options I have received off-list, so I wanted to ask the entire community for suggestions on what you are using and what works best for you:
OPTION A.
EX # 1:
Category = Firefox
Firefox - Self-service install
Firefox - Automatic install
Firefox - Uninstall

EX # 2:
Category = Office
Office 2008 install - Self-service
Office 2008 - Automatic
Office 2008 - Uninstall
Office 2011 install - Self-service
Office 2011 - Automatic
Office 2011 - Uninstall

OPTION B:
Category = Automated
Office 2011 - Automatic
Firefox - Automatic

Category = Self-Service
Office 2011 - Self-Service
Firefox = Self-Service

OPTION C:
Category = Applications Installs
Office 2011 - Self-Service
Office 2011 - Automatic
Firefox - Self-Service
Firefox - Automatic

Category = Monthly Maintenance
Reset Master Password - Automatic
Run System Updates - Automatic

Category = Uninstaller
Office 2011 - Uninstaller
Firefox - Uninstaller

These are a few options, but I am not sure I like any of them. Which is why I am reaching out to the community to hear your ideas of how you organize your JSS.

[tuinte]

We organize policy by "genre". Categories: Anti-Virus, Creative Applications/Media (iLife, Creative Suite, VLC, etc), Internet Browsers & Plugins (Firefox, Chrome, Flash Player, etc), Printers & Driver (drivers and printer mapping), Productivity (Office, iWork, Acrobat), etc, as well as a Utilities category (reinstall VPN settings, Software Updates) and a few IT-only categories like Setup, Troubleshooting and Missions (for one-off policies).

The JSS can publish any policy to Self Service (if you set a trigger, you can still check "Allow this policy to be used in Self Service" in the Self Service tab), so we have a single policy for Firefox that auto-installs on scoped machines at login but also shows up in Self Service for scoped machines if a user is already logged in.

Uninstallers we put in a separate category so they'd be all in one place and couldn't be confused with the installers (having a Firefox installer and uninstaller in the same category would undoubtedly result in accidental uninstalls).

I can answer more specific questions if you have them, but that's the gist.

Michael

[mm2270]

Similar to @tuinte][/url, we tend to use generalized categories for the type of software or policy. For example, Antivirus, Backup, Internet, OS, Printers, Productivity, Telepresence, Virtualization, just to name a handful.
Many of these are also used in Self Service, but we have some categories that don't appear there because we don't put SS style policies in them. These would be more for maintenance or utility style policies, for example, anything we want to apply silently, such as a fix or some maintenance scripts.

Lastly, we have an [Old Policies] category, which by using the [ & ] puts it at or near the end of the list on the policy page. This is, obviously, for older deprecated policies that we need to keep in the JSS but can't delete just yet. Also a similar [Test] category for the purpose of testing before moving into one of the above production categories.