Display a message to Users

[lpadmin]

Hello, I have a weird question. I was wondering if there is a way to display a PDF (or something similar) when a user first logs in to their computer. I am looking for a way to send messages to users outside of their email, since students are not the best at checking there email.

[EliasG · Accepted solution]

you can set a policy and click on User Interaction Tab and do a message that way..

[ctangora]

We do something similar in two ways.

1) You can use the /Library/Security/PolicyBanner.rtfd file to show a file above the login window or when they fast user switch. This can be formatted as any rich text document can be.

2) We also use cocoaDialog to display a message once per computer on login to tell them the current state of something.

Either way should "get the message across".

hahaha, oh I'm funny.

-c

[dwhitehead]

It looks like a few good options have already been mentioned.

CocoaDialog is great. If you wanted a builtin option, JAMFHelper should be able to get the job done. E.g.:

/Library/Application Support/JAMF/bin/jamfHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/jamfHelper -windowType hud -title "Your Title Goes Here" -alHeading center -heading "Important Announcement" -description "Important announcement info goes here" -alignDescription left -button1 "OK" -defaultButton 1

The above could be placed in a script tied to a policy that runs on every login.

If you're really keen on using an actual PDF, you could store it somewhere universally accessible (e.g. /Users/Shared/LoginPDF/login.pdf) and have policy with a script that opens the pdf ( open /Users/Shared/LoginPDF/login.pdf) run on login. If you end up doing this, I would recommend having the script check to ensure the file hasn't been removed prior to attempting to open it:

if [ ! -e /Users/Shared/LoginPDF/login.pdf ];
then jamf policy -trigger CustomTriggerForPolicyThatPlacesThePDFHere
fi

[#5]

You might also use Self Service to run a policy, or create a custom plug-in using a file:// path to the PDF.