iBeacon Use Cases

[reidlewis]

Hello JAMF Nation,

I'm writing to ask for your help. Twocanoes and I are gathering information about how you are using or want to use iBeacons with the Casper Suite. Our plan is to document the steps needed to implement the most popular requests and share those notes with the JAMFnation community.

If you are using or planning to use Beacons in your deployments, I’d love to hear about it. Your input will help Twocanoes improve our solutions and, if you agree, may be featured in a white paper. You can email me directly at reidlewis AT twocanoes.com or simply respond back in this thread.

The use cases requested by you and your colleagues starting at JNUC include:
Setup nearby printer

Select AirPlay for nearby AppleTV

Disable App Store or Apps based on iBeacon in range

Trigger a checkin on iBeacon in range

Regardless of the stage of your implementation, please let me know your plans. Everyone’s situation is a bit different, so I'd like to hear from you!

- Reid

T. Reid Lewis <reidlewis AT twocanoes.com>
Twocanoes Labs
Creators of Bleu JSS beacon configuration app
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProduct.html?id=367&view=info

[davidacland]

I've been messing around with my iBeacon from the JNUC. Printing and Airplay would definitely be on my list.

Setting proxy configurations on / off (or possibly Mac OS X network locations) when they entered leave a beacon range could be neat, specifically for schools. Although it would need to be more like a "tripwire" for the main entrance so the device knows when it has entered or left the site.

[Look]

My idea was an iOS app or webpage for proximity print job release on follow you type print servers.
You walk up to the printer, open the app, it auto detects the nearest printer and you release your print jobs.
If anyone takes this idea and makes a working version let me know :)

[aexley]

Few things we are considering for ibeacons:

1. Automatic load of library catalogue web page on entering Library

2. "Heritage hot spots" - providing points of discovery around the school that are of historic relevance by linking to web pages

3. Automated attendance

[jason_stanaland]

Great thread. Really excited to see what customers will do with Beacons to solve problems. A few I have seen include:

Single App mode when entering a region

Distribution of a Web Clip related to the region entered

Restriction Profile when entering / leaving a region, such as allowing access to cameras, iMessage, AppStore, etc.

I hope this thread heats up again, as I am really interested to hear how this technology will be used to automate functionality. Thanks for the post!

[pmartin]

I would like to see Casper Focus incorporate some functionality with beacons. It would be very powerful for teachers to be able to push weblinks, assignments, reminders, etc within the confines of their classroom/beacon area.

[sadamson]

I just watched the latest Beacon webinar and it is good stuff... Thanks

I ordered and received two beacon packs last week (kontakt and estimote) and doing a little testing with them right now. I liked the idea of having the system force an update of inventory when passing a beacon - I'm trying that but not seeing that working - it has not been triggered even though the beacon is sitting on the laptop (i'm limiting it to one beacon and my laptop). i'm considering putting a beacon at the entry way of our office so when someone passes the beacon the system kicks off an inventory/backup etc so when they get to a help desk person these are a) starting or b) complete.

i was also thinking about putting a beacon in laptop carts - when the laptops are returned to the cart (or maybe daily) a report could be run to verify all 20 laptops are in the cart - possible? when I try to run a search using the iBeacon criteria that is not an option on our 9.65 casper deployment. also will this work if the laptop is on but the screen is closed and plugged into the cart power outlet?

lastly my thought was to put a beacon at the entry points of the library and a) locking the laptop if removed from the library (they are only to be used in the library) b) forcing them to connect to a hidden SSID and nothing else that only exists in the library on those APs. If the laptop leaves the library it would not see the SSID and not be able to connect to the network.

thoughts about this?
appreciate the help but this could be a very valuable tool...
Scott

[Emmert]

Does the iBeacon require an inventory update to work in conjunction with iPads? I ordered a couple which arrived today and am unhappy with the results.

[cdenesha]

@Emmert I think Self Service Mobile is supposed to be noticing the BT signals and signaling the JSS.

[kitchman]

I would love the ability to push apps based on a beacon. For some of our school customers, I think it would be cool to only install an app associated with that class when they enter the classroom (i.e. Music class may install Garageband and other apps scoped to that iBeacon, when the students leave, those apps are removed.)

[amenard]

Printing from an iPad based on proximity to a printer would be nice.

[DanielN]

I just bought one to play with and right now I have it post to a private slack channel using the incoming webhooks intergration when a machine enters or leaves my area...

Example:
/usr/bin/curl -X POST --data-urlencode 'payload={"pretext": "'$HOSTNAME'", "text": "This system has approached an iBeacon region.", "channel": "#ibeacon", "username": "iBeacon", "icon_url": "https://maxcdn.icons8.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ibeacon_copyrighted1.png"}' https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR_WEBHOOKS_URL

/usr/bin/curl -X POST --data-urlencode 'payload={"pretext": "'$HOSTNAME'", "text": "This system has left an iBeacon region.", "channel": "#ibeacon", "username": "iBeacon", "icon_url": "https://maxcdn.icons8.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ibeacon_copyrighted1.png"}' https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR_WEBHOOKS_URL

[jefff]

My university's police department wants them for vertical location detection. GPS data can show the dispatcher that their officer or the person who just activated the panic button app (on their personal iOS device) is in the NW corner of multistory Building X. Beacon data can tell them which floor of Building X the officer/panic button app user is on.

[aswain]

We are a utility maintenance company. I'd like to pop up the current Health and Safety message when an iPad enters our yard.

[Malcolm]

@reidlewis
waking up an old post of yours, and you probably have moved on from this project.
I just bought some ibeacons, with the endeavour to try and make Jamf force shutdown. device when it comes in contact with a beacon.

The back story is we have students who use an area of the school to gather and game with each other, while they wait for their parents.
I had hoped to use ibeacons in conjunction with jamf to force the devices to shutdown when they come in contact with the ibeacon, during a specific time of the day.

[SMG2009]

I would like to set up an ibeacon to enable/disable the ability to turn on/off bluetooth in a classroom.

Enable when they come in, disable and turn on when they leave.

Thoughts?

[Andy_McCaskill]

@johnnyg08 So you want to use Bluetooth beacon to turn off Bluetooth when they are near it and turn back on when they are not. How would it check in if the Bluetooth is off? You would constantly need bluetooth on for it to check that status.

Bigger question is why would you want Bluetooth to be off in the classroom? Tools like Apple classroom require bluetooth to be ON to start classes.

[SMG2009]

I'm thinking more along the lines of enabling/disabling the ability to do so within the range of the iBeacon

The ability to do this could eliminate the troubleshooting that goes along with Bluetooth keyboards not connecting and users not being able to enable/disable bluetooth on their own.

[bartreardon]

So in the 10.13 release notes https://docs.jamf.com/10.13.0/jamf-pro/release-notes/Deprecations_and_Removals.html:

iBeacon Regions—The ability to add and monitor iBeacon regions will be removed in a future release of Jamf Pro.

Any reason for this? - just working out a solution for indoor position tracking and this would be ideal (and works brilliantly in testing). If iBeacon monitoring goes away, are there any recommendations for other utilities that can detect beacons?

[Graeme]

Removing iBeacons is disappointing :-(. We just brought some in the hope of forcing the mobile devices to run the settings app in single app mode if the kids turn off bluetooth. We have lots of issues with the kids turning off bluetooth to disable Apple classroom.

Please JAMF let us either create smart groups based on bluetooth status (could self-service be made to monitor this?) or bring back Casper Focus.

Regards
Graeme

[John_Wetter]

The bluetooth functionality @Graeme is requesting is built in to iOS as it is a profile to disallow disabling Bluetooth. Now, students can still turn on Airplane mode but the disallow disabling of WiFi is in iOS 13 so that's likely a better solution to test through workflows with.

iBeacons seem to have always been the technology that was neat but just never quite worked well enough, especially after the issues with being able to push iOS notifications through to the notification center.

[Graeme]

We already use the profile option to disallow changing Bluetooth but that means that Bluetooth devices cant be added to the device. This is constant annoyance but better than allowing students to turn the Bluetooth off.

If iOS 13 will disallow turning Bluetooth off (don't care much about Wi-Fi) that will be great however most of our devices are iPad Air 1's so no iOS 13 for them :-(.

Regards
Graeme

[miguelfc]

Hello,

I'm currently trying to make an webclip available only when the devices are within an ibeacon region. Does anyone have experience with this?

Thank you

Miguel Frade Correia