notifying users

[Bukira]

Hi All,

Previously people have asked how they can inform users when Self Service, or by other means, items have been installed etc.

growlNotify can inform users via shell scripts.

I use Hardware Growl to let users know when devices have been attached etc, its very useful to diagnose and external device

Criss Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[jarednichols]

Do people distribute/use Growl frequently and use that as a notification system? I hadn't actually thought about it, but with the reliability problems of the usual notification messages, that may be a fantastic alternative.

j
---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Infrastructure & Operations
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[tlarkin]

Apple Script can display text boxes.

[jarednichols]

Yes, it can, but for some reason, it seems to be un-reliable. I think it's a mechanism in the OS that's broken. Kinda been a long known thing that it can be iffy

---
Jared F. Nichols
Desktop Engineer, Infrastructure & Operations
Information Services Department
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
Lexington, Massachusetts 02420
781.981.5436

[tlarkin]

This is a bit outdated, but I think it is still applicable. Apple Script is pretty robust and you can script out all sorts of GUI user based interaction with text boxes

http://www.macobserver.com/tips/applescript/2001/20010917.shtml

Can't say that I have done too much of this myself, but I am sure it would be great to learn such things. So, it is on my list of things to learn.

-Tom

[Bukira]

Yup,

But as a basic message notification system, growlnotify is great

Criss

Criss Myers
Senior Customer Support Analyst (Mac Services)
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator v10.5
LIS Business Support Team
Library 301
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE
Ex 5054
01772 895054

[#7]

Is the regular Message Box that the JSS allows not enough? In the Reboot
tab of a self service policy you can set the package to not reboot the
machine but still display whatever message you want.

Bob

[Bukira]

Yeah. But ppl were reporting issues with that not working, so this Is another method as users on this group requested to know of other methods

Growlnotify

Or

Ihook

Criss

[donmontalvo]

I've played around with Growl. Does Casper show up on the applications "Criss Myers" <CMyers at uclan.ac.uk> wrote:
list in Growl's pref pane?

Don

[Bukira]

No but growlnotify is a command line tool for messages

[donmontalvo]

Interesting. I have Growl installed (1.2b5 since I'm on SL) and I On Sep 25, 2009, at 1:36 PM, Criss Myers wrote:
found the growlnotify tool and ran the install.sh installer. Can't seem to get to the man page to see how it works. I guess this is the wrong forum for that though... :)

Thanks,
Don

[Bukira]

Type

growlnotify -h

It's in /usr/local/bin

[donmontalvo]

Thanks Criss! Seems like something is broken. The growlnotify man page On Sep 26, 2009, at 4:07 AM, Criss Myers wrote:
can be brought up manually:

man /usr/local/man/man1/growlnotify.1

I let the developer know so it can be fixed (so it works without changing our path).

I use Growl for notification on my own MacBook Pro, but wasn't aware there was a command line tool. Can those who use it post some examples of how to get dialog boxes to display using growl? :):):)

Thanks,
Don

[Bukira]

Growlnotify -a Finder -t "important notice" -m "the local drive will be erased at the end on the month" -s

Etc

Can use -w to pause for input,

I use it with self service to notify users that apps have been installed

Or push messages via Casper remote

What other info did u need?

Criss

[clifhirtle]

Following up on this... any updates in everyone's process since Growl went paid and Notification Center is out? Seems that since v2.0 Growl integrates with NC *and* the core of Growl still works if local applications update their frameworks, but not sure there is a local application that Casper would offer that would integrate with (?).

[clifhirtle]

OK maybe I just answered my own question... looks like terminal notifier might be good, basic alternative to the full growl install for basic user notifications integration into Notification Center:

https://github.com/alloy/terminal-notifier

[tlarkin]

Hi Everyone,

You can use JAMF Helper, AppleScript, or a third party solution either open source or commercial to do this, like growl for example. Here is an example of how you could prompt an end user to enter their asset tag, and then use recon to populate that field in the computer record of the JSS.

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/osascript <<-AppleScript

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    display dialog "Enter your asset number" default answer "Enter your asset tag number here"
    set theAnswer to (text returned of result)
    set cmd to "/usr/sbin/jamf recon -assetTag " & theAnswer
    do shell script cmd
end tell

AppleScript


exit 0

[ctangora]

I have played around with CocoaDialog and had great results.

Currently I use the jamfhelper and cocoa dialog to display completed messages (with timeouts).

[clifhirtle]

Thanks guys. The interactive aspect of AppleScript is neat but in this case we're just looking to notify users of impending software updates.

UPDATE: There's an older JAMF article that details additional flags/options that can be used with the displayMessage command, but none of them appear to be working on my test systems (see: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/article.html?id=107)

Are these options work for the rest of you? Am I missing some alternative means of unleashing the jamf binary's awesomenessInDialogueness?