General question: what is the best way to plug in serial numbers/licenses when installing apps/programs?

[rich_seide]

I know this is a general question but one that seems to have many different answers, depending on the software in question.

But, in general, if an app requires a license or serial number to be entered after installation (one that doesn't require an internet connection to register), what is the best way to do this? I am not experienced with scripting and I am not quite sure how to do this with FUT/FEU enabled.

I did searches on this forum and didn't find a general answer. There seems to be many posts about how to do this with specific software.

Thanks again.

[dgreening]

It really depends on how a piece of software is licensed. You will have the most luck using FEU with an application which is part of a volume license agreement (not individual license keys) and stores its licensing information in a plist or some other licensing file in /Library/Preferences/ or ~/Library/Preferences/ or in the /Application Support/ folder(s).

You would do a snapshot installation of the product in Composer, license it, and look at the files it changed. Build a DMG of it and set FEU and test. This method has worked for us with software like Omnigraffle on a volume license key.

We limit installs for licensed software via Active Directory groups. A user would submit a ticket to the Software Asset Team, they would verify eligibility, and then drop the user into, say, the "Omnigraffle Users" AD group, which the Self Service Omnigraffle policy is limited to.

Would be nice if the JSS' Licensed Software functionality allowed some sort of customization by which you could actually license products...

[Look]

There is no general answer every piece of software is different in this regard.
One thing to check is the vendors documentation as a lot of packages actually have a command line that can be run as a script in Casper to activate the product or use Composer to package the product as a pkg with the activation as a post install script.
Otherwise as @dgreening says use composer to try and capture the changed files and deploy those.

[rich_seide]

@dgreening and @Look Thanks for your responses. It's been helpful. I didn't think there was a single answer and I was trying to get an idea of how some people approached and/or figured out a solution for my question.

Thanks again!