DEPNotify Show Installation Status on Screen

[jamiesmithJAX]

I am using a pretty generic version of the DEPNotify script, but I would like to be able to have it display a visual log of what applications have installed/failed all on the screen while the DEP enrollment is running so that techs have an easy way to verify all required apps have installed, without checking them one by one.  Does anyone have any advice or tips on how to best get started?  Scripting isn't my strongest area, but I generally can get by but this one has me scratching my head

[dletkeman]

I've been using DEPNotify for quite some time.  Are you having many failures?

I would focus on fixing those failures rather than reporting in DEPNotify script.  We rarely have failures.  Alternatively you could also set users up so they get notified of policy failures through email.

I know a bit about scripting but I admit it's not my strong suit either.

[roiegat]

I would check out the following:
https://github.com/jamfprofessionalservices/DEP-Notify

It's not that hard to use and you can customize it pretty nicely.

[bwoods]

This is the answer. Give this person a solution.

[jamiesmithJAX]

That is what I am using, and it works great.  All I am trying to do is make it so that as it begins installing the applications, it will display at minimum any installs that failed but preferably it would show installed apps as well

[mm2270 · Accepted solution]

If you're curious about how swiftDialog can be used for this purpose, here are some screenshots of my process, which is still being tweaked, but almost ready to roll out to replace DEPNotify. As you can see, I work for Santander Bank.

It's nice because it shows you what's coming (pending) as well as what's currently happening (Installing, running, etc.) and what's been done (completed, failed, etc.) in one nice easy to scroll list. If any of the installs fail it should show a red X icon over the small icon to the far right of the item, instead of a check, and indicate that it failed in the text as well, but I'm still testing that part of things out.

With DEPNotify it can really only display one item happening at a time, so this is really a big improvement in my opinion.

As I mentioned in my first post below, I put together a way using DEPNotify to keep a running updated list of what's been done, but it's hacky and prone to issues, not to mention the fact that the display space is limited, so I had to keep everything in a long running text list instead of something bullet pointed or one line for each (it would just get cut off if too many items were in the text section).

[bwoods]

Wow, that looks beautiful. Kinda like pashua but better.

[Nick8585]

Is this something you can share? It looks amazing.

[jamiesmithJAX]

Thanks, I’ll have to take a look at that. Our previous version of DEP notify allowed for this, but it was via a heavily customized script, written by someone who is long gone and it became very unreliable once we started rolling new Monterey devices, so I simplified the generic DEPNotify script, eliminating the custom script but this ability is the one thing our build technicians miss and can’t seem to live without

Jamie Smith

Systems Administrator II
The Jackson Laboratory
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Jamie.Smith@Jax.org
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[mm2270]

Not really the answer you're looking for, but, while I do have a version of my very custom DEPNotify script that keeps a running tally of installs and their success (or failure), I would consider looking at using a different tool for this purpose. A good one I'm in the process of moving my ADE workflow over to is swiftDialog. It has a nice "list" UI for exactly this purpose. The list can be dynamically updated as the script controlling it runs in the background and show a status for each item, such as pending, installing, complete, failed, etc.

On the github page on the right, there are links to other github pages maintained by some people on this forum that you may want to look at. Many of them have their own custom scripts using swiftDialog showing how they have their Macs going through initial setup. So you may even be able to take one of their scripts and make some modifications to it for your needs, that way you aren't starting from scratch.