Deploying VPP Mac App Store Apps via JAMF

[dstranathan]

Im starting to experiment with deployiong/assigning (free) Mac App Store apps to computers. Im currently scoping a few apps to my 10.11-based IT Dept Macs for testing. My plan is to leverage VPP/MAS/JAMF for a few free common apps such as Microsoft OneDrive and Micrsoft Remote Desktop.

A few questions:

1) If I deploy a Mac App Store app to a Mac that already has the app installed under a user's personal Appe ID, what happens? Does it overwrite the exisiting personal app with my VPP version, or does it keep the user's version?

2) If Im assigning Mac App Store apps per-device/computer (not per-user), does the user ever see any kind of MAS/iTunes GUI pop-up that I should be aware of? Or is it 100% silent?

3) If I remove a Mac from the scope of a Mac App Store app, does JAMF remove the app from the Mac client too? What if the app is currently running? Does it orphan any Dock icons?

4) What does the JSS checkbox labled "Assign VPP content (Assign VPP content to computers with OS X v10.11 or later)" mean?

5) If I change the name of the app in the JSS > Mac App Store, does it affect the name of the .app on my Mac client computers? What purpose does changing the MAS app's name in the JSS serve?

[carmona]

Wow, this is exactly what we want to do and I have all these questions as well...

[Asnyder]

As far as #1 goes: For IOS I know there is the option to make the app managed if it is already installed, not sure on MacOS. I'm assuming it will apply a vpp license to it instead of the users - but I could very well be wrong on that.

For #2 It's pretty silent. No popups or anything. It looks like the user clicked the install button in the app store, but without the app store open. I.E. they can watch the install progress from launchpad.

Well, I can answer #4 for you with 100% confidence as I forget to check this all the time. This tells the server to use a VPP license for the app as opposed to prompting the user to sign into their appleID and have them "purchase" and download. Purchase is in quotes because free apps still need to be tied to an appleID. You still have to "buy" them in apple school manager/vpp portal.