Jamf App Installers - Adobe CC Shared Device Licence

[Ecco_Luke]

Hi All,

Does anyone know if it's possible to deploy the Adobe CC apps via Jamf App Installers (awesome feature, by the way!) and then issue just the Shared Device licence from the Adobe Admin Console to licence them? 

It sounds logically possible, since you can just deploy the Shared Device licence file and the Adobe menu bar app without any other apps in the Admin Console... basically, I'd far rather deploy the Jamf packages than go through the Admin Console rigmarole if at all possible.

[JustinC]

Hi @Ecco_Luke .

Yes, you should be able to deploy your Creative Clouds apps with App Installers and license via the Admin Console as you have described.

[smallchange]

Hi @Ecco_Luke, curious if this ended up working for you? Looking at switching to App Installers rather than deploying the packages via policy. If so, what does the process look like?

Thanks in advance!

[Ecco_Luke]

Hi @smallchange - Yep, it certainly does. One of our customers reported that end-users cannot manually update the CC apps from the Adobe CC Menu Bar app, though, which would make since since JAI handles them automatically. I'm guessing JAI deploys a version of the installer package that disables the end-user's ability to update apps (which you can do within the Adobe Admin Console as well). It's also good to know that you don't get forcibly upgraded to the next major release (e.g. from 2022 to 2023) - that remains a totally separate app deployment, and on balance is a really good idea to ensure compatibility and stability.

[smallchange]

Thank you for the insights! I tested it out last night and it seems to be working as designed, game changer!! I used to have to package all the apps in four groups due to size restrictions on the JSS / time, now I can just define the App Installers and deploy Creative Cloud as a policy.

A question more related to the CC client deployment; when you deploy the Creative Cloud application and the license, do you just upload the install package located in the build folder that gets extracted from the DMG, and then deploy that via policy? I only ask because the installation seems to work, but I see sometime see failures in the logs related to the package. The only thing that has worked for me in the past (without failures in the logs) has been uploading the whole .zip of pkg. Let me know if that makes sense, we get our packages from Adobe Admin Console.

[Ecco_Luke]

Great that it's working for you 😊 

Regarding the Shared Device licence file deployment - yes, absolutely. I do the same thing. Just create an 'empty' Shared Device package in the Adobe Admin Console (required to get the Shared Device licence), extract the '_Build' PKG from the downloaded DMG and upload it to the Jamf Pro instance. You can actually compress that extracted PKG locally on your Mac by right-clicking it and selecting 'Archive', which will give you a '.zip.pkg' file. It won't save very much space at all, but it can help sometimes in my experience. 

[JustinC]

@Ecco_Luke just wanted to confirm your suspicions, we do disable the ability for the end user to install or update apps via the Creative Cloud desktop app. The main reason for this is so that we don't have a conflict between the App Installers service and the Creative Cloud app trying to update an app at the same time which can result in a corrupted app on the end user machine.

This does mean that you can't have the end user be able to install other Creative Cloud applications themselves from the app which has been a blocker for some customers being able to utilise App Installers for Creative Cloud applications.

Once we have delivered the ability to publish App Installers titles via Self Service (which we announced during the JNUC 2022 keynote) this should make this workflow more suitable for other customers. They will just be able to publish every Creative Cloud title in Self Service for end users to install as needed and still rely on App Installers to keep those versions patched automatically.

[Ecco_Luke]

@JustinC - Thanks so much for the confirmation 😊 I was almost certain this was happening due to reported behaviour from customers, and also following the logic that if JAI is managing updates then it makes sense to restrict the user from also doing so. We offer an MSP service, so the apps are deployed by us anyway and it's actually useful from our perspective that users can't install their own.

The biggest hurdle currently is the lack of Self Service install option, but as you say this has been announced for some time. It'd also be great to have more scoping options, rather than just to one particular install group.

JAI is an amazing feature, particularly with Adobe CC installations as it was always a real drag doing it from the Admin Console. It's made a lot of Admins very happy 😊 

[bilbobaggins989]

so Im confused where you are pulling the SDL file from and how your uploading it into Jamf to deploy.  That is where Im confused.  I know there is the ability to upload an XML file but im having problems finding that XML file.

any pointers on where to look???

[Ecco_Luke]

Hi @bilbobaggins989 

I'm getting the SDL file from the customer's Adobe Admin Console area, by:

• Creating a new Package
• Selecting Shared Device Licensing as the licence type
• Create an empty package, download it and extract the PKG from the downloaded DMG
• Upload to Jamf Pro as normal, ready for deployment via a standard Policy

You can then create a Smart Group based on if a Mac has the SDL file or not, and scope some/all of the Adobe apps using that group as a baseline. So for Photoshop, you could make a group that has the criteria of 'Has Adobe SDL file AND is a member of the Photography group' as an example. Since we cannot yet scope JAC apps as freely as Policies (hopefully coming soon!).

[bilbobaggins989]

So when I go to my admin console I can’t just leave it empty it has to have
the CC app itself at least.

Cheers,

Billy Ruhlen
Helpdesk Field Technician
74 W Williams Street
Delaware, OH 43015
ruhlenwi@delawarecityschools.net

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[Ecco_Luke]

That's totally fine - that's still an 'empty' package (in the sense that no Adobe apps are added, except for CC management app).

[DaneAbernathy]

I'm having some weird issues with this. Have you experienced this:

• Adobe CC packaged from Adobe Admin Console - as a Flat Package (why did it take them so long?)
• Policy pushed Adobe to lab computer
• Jamf App Installer for all the apps is scoped via self-service (also tried installing automatically and am getting the same situation I am about to explain)
• When you install, or Jamf auto installs, one of the Adobe apps, Adobe CC gets completely uninstalled and then doesn't install the app.

I can't for the life of me figure out why this is happening.

[DaneAbernathy]

I meant to mention that adobe CC installs fine with the flat package from Adobe and the Jamf policy to install it.