Ideas on iBeacon use within corporate environments?

[annmariec]

Morning everyone! While I know that 9.5 has only been out for a week, I wanted to see if anyone within JAMF Nation has thought of any unique or creative ideas to utilize iBeacons and the Casper Suite with a corporate environment? I found some lists online, but, nearly all of them focused on retail -> consumer...

[rderewianko]

We're evaluating use for them as ease of use for printers.
Our idea is because we've got offices all over the world, rather than have our users go into self service and install it. We envision telling them to bring their laptop close to the printer and it'll auto install.

My beacon's coming this week so we'll see how well it works.

I ordered one of these. http://www.radiusnetworks.com/ibeacon/radbeacon/

[annmariec]

Since I posted this I also found an article by Ryan Faas that had some interesting use cases that weren't retail and might involve the Casper Suite in the workflow: - AppleTV in a conference room (automatically adding an Apple TV to the Airplay list when devices approached a beacon)
- company events (manuals, resources required for sessions or training) - meetings in a conference room (show schedule, distribute resources, urls, training)
- corporate fundraisers or events (resources like the website to donate) - moving to new building (we recently used it to distribute maps by floor when people moved into the new office)

Link to Ryan's full article: http://www.citeworld.com/article/2114878/mobile-byod/ibeacon-transform-more-than-retail.html

[tadholyfamily]

Teachers have asked me if iMessage and FaceTime can be disabled only during school hours. Casper doesn't have time-based policy addition and removal, but it seems iBeacons with full coverage of a school or office could do the same. This would also allow any other sort of site or time based needs like global proxy or VPN while at school/work, but not at home. Location-based restrictions also come to mind, if say you disallow iPad usage in the cafeteria/lunchroom an iBeacon policy could add a single-app-mode profile into Notes. Or instead it could limit iPads containing sensitive information to only work within their designated use areas.

[#5]

@tadholyfamily you could accomplish similar things (on OS X, anyway) using network segments and scoping profiles or policies to them, or use an EA to check current wireless name.

[Millertime]

My company has around 40,000 workstations, and we support our Macs quite a bit different than our Windows boxes. I envision having an iBeacon at our support desk that we leverage for all Mac support. Then when a Mac user would stop by and open their Mac it would launch a policy that would execute some support scripts that would gather information and send them to the techs.

[Millertime]

@pete_c Personally doing anything that keys off of specific network segments is out of the question. I wish it weren't the case, but in a geographically diverse company with tens of thousands of subnets that are constantly changing, that would be unmanageable for our Casper Admins.

So for us iBeacons offers a potential solution for ideas that we had been dreaming up for quite a while. Yet had no feasible way to accomplish.

[dderusha]

@Millertime Thinking along with the help desk trigger.....
When a user stops at the Help Desk, and they trigger the "Help Desk" region, the iBeacon would trigger a maintenance policy to run a permissions fix, clear caches, and install all OS updates.

We have a printer configured with a iBeacon, and its pretty cool to see it work. Thanks to TwoCanoes awesome tech support! Currently we have the printer installing once you enter the region, and removing when you exit the region. I'm thinking about leaving the printer installed, and instead making a policy that checks to see if the printer is already installed......if so just make it the default printer. If its not mapped, map it.

[Chris_Hafner]

Just wondering about the 'HelpDesk' iBeacon. It would seem to me that you pretty well prevent any 'help' from the help desk until those updates and processes were finished. It's an interesting idea, but automatically pushing things like that to a machine that is already having issues sounds like a good way to muck stuff up... and make the customer wait.

How about automatically enabling a new section in Self-Service for those items. Makes quick access for the HelpDesk tech, but doesn't just start lighting things off on it's own?

[dderusha]

@Chris_Hafner

The thought was to take care of the basic maintenance while the user waits for the help desk tech to become available.
Educating your users about the "Healing HotSpot" would be the same as educating them to use Self Service.
Users would not be able to mistakenly walk past the beacon enabling the policies. iBeacon at low power, you almost need to be on top of the iBeacon for it to trigger.
I would disagree that repairing permissions and clearing caches would further damage a system. Our OS updates are tested and controlled by a internal SUS. It would be no different if our users chose to use our self service button to update their apple software, or the maintenance button we have set to run maintenance policies.
If the two people on the help desk are fielding calls or working on other tickets, it would allow the user to walk up to the help desk and take care of maintenance the help desk will have to perform anyway.
:)

[Chris_Hafner]

@dderusha

To be fair I like the idea now that you've clarified. I just had this vision in my head of someone walking into the help desk with and issue and having either having it automatically and unknowingly fixed while they waited, leaving them in the dark and feeling silly when they get to your help desk staff. Or worse, having the issue persist only without all of the symptoms your help desk looks for in order to diagnose the original issue. Obviously this isn't the case here! Actually I really like the "Healing HotSpot”. Especially if you’re still trying to sell managed services or educate users on “Self-Service” as that same “Healing HotSpot” can be included in Self-Service.

As a matter of fact, I was really looking for a use for iBeacons (All of our needs have really been met by the way we’ve configured the JSS and Self-Service). This would be a great thing for me to setup in the Library for that panicked user who’s forgotten what we’ve taught them… or where Self-Service is. Actually, I may just have it open self-service come to think of it! Nice thinking on this one!

P.S. Any user with a failing HDD should NOT be installing anything for fear of pushing it over the edge. That was my primary thought. You’re quite right that not too many and things can result from a cache clear or permissions repair.

[dderusha]

@Chris_Hafner

I had to sell you on it first! haha

Now you got me thinking ......what if we added smart status to the policy.
Instead of scoping it to All or people with OS updates etc...Created a smart group that has the SMART status as verified.
Only verified can run the maintenance policy.

[Chris_Hafner]

Yep... if only we could trust SMART Status ;-) Yet, nothing is ever perfect... especially in this regard. Then again, so long as the user is consciously putting their laptop on the "spot" for automated repair all's fair.