has anyone tried Cisco AnyConnect -applychoicesXML ?

[tcandela]

Has anyone tried to install Cisco AnyConnect using the -applyChoiceChangesXML process?

[tcandela · Accepted solution]

nevermind, I got it working.

[bmarks]

To belatedly answer your question, yes. This is how we install AnyConnect without one of the modules for which we aren't licensed.

[tcandela]

@bmarks what is your install policy setup?

I have the cisco any connect.pkg and the choices.plist zipped up and use Composer to .pkg it up (/private/tmp) and use a script in the policy to unzip and install.

installer -pkg anyconnect.pkg -target / -applychoicesXML ...................

and it works perfect.

[tkimpton]

Here is how to extract the web deploy pkg which you can install and it will only install the vpn client.

extracting cisco anyconnect for mac

[FredrikRydin]

How do you do these changes in Jamf Pro?
When adding a package in Jamf Pro i can't see the source or modify the package command line.
There must be a way to install anyconnect with the modules that we want with original package?

[talkingmoose]

@FredrikRydin, I originally wrote this script with Microsoft Office 2016 in mind but found it also works with the Cisco AnyConnect installer package when working with one of my customers a few weeks ago.

Copy the AnyConnect PKG to your desktop. Open the .scpt file in the Script Editor application and click the Run button. If you run it and receive an error at the end, that may not necessarily indicate it failed. There's something else I need to handle better. Just haven't looked into it yet.

https://github.com/talkingmoose/Choices-Packager

[bmarks]

@FredrikRydin If I understand your question, there is no way to use the Jamf Pro web console by itself to install specific sub-packages of a meta-package. You will need to do some manual work first. There are other threads on this, so I won't go into too much detail. but one option most people choose is to use Composer to create a brand new package. This package has a payload of Cisco's official AnyConnect meta-package. It also has a payload of an XML file and it has a postscript. The XML file is usually called a "Choices.xml" file. You can get this file from any meta-package using the Terminal

installer

command. The Choices.xml file lets you put a 0 or a 1 beside the sub-packages you want to install (or not) from a meta-package.

What happens then is your package runs and it puts Cisco's meta-package and your XML file in a temporary location (like /tmp) and then the postscript runs and tells Cisco's meta-package to run but not before feeding it the XML file that tells it which sub-packages to install. In the end, you can then delete the originals if you want.

You can obviously use Jamf Pro to deploy this new package you created with Composer, but you can't do all of this solely with the web console by itself. We deploy our AnyConnect package as part of our DEP PreStage Configuration.