Office update - Better prompt for update info

[Captainamerica]

Does anyone now about an "pretty" way to prompt for office updates. I know you can add notification sliding in, but they are pretty small and users normally ignore them as all kind of stuff appears there often

So if updates/installation where ready for office a prompt should appear in center of the screen saying they need to close office application as update is pending - and maybe also with some deferrel option

Have tried to search for scripts etc, but not manage to find something. Do any has some usable ?

[mm2270]

How much did you search here on JamfNation for scripts that can do what you're looking for? Because I'm having a hard time believing there wasn't something in the searches that could point you in the right direction. This type of "custom patching" as I call it, has been discussed on numerous threads before. Granted, there is no one concise resource for this since the question has been asked a number of times, spawning different but similar discussions.

In short, you probably want to look for discussions that talk about using jamfHelper, a dialoging tool installed by Jamf upon enrollment, to get the type of notification on screen that you're looking for. I would start there.

[Captainamerica]

have tried and look but not something I can find on office prompts - for OS there exist a lot.
The problem is that users just don´t look at the notifications that slide in about office applications needs to be updated. Would work better if a prompt would appear center on the screen and saying fx outlook needs to be closed. It can then be deferred some times but lastly it will force closing it down and do the update.

Users here newer restart applications or even the computer :(

[mm2270]

Yeah. What you're experiencing is the same issue a lot of people I've spoken to have an issue with on how the current Jamf patch process works. The notification center option is nice, but unless Jamf changes it so it stays on screen until the user acknowledges the message by clicking a button, then the current method is not well implemented, since it disappears in a few seconds, and how many Mac users do you know who make it a habit to look at the Notification Center slideout? I almost never do myself.

There are certainly more custom patch workflows in use out there by other Jamf Pro admins. You might want to look at some of the threads that talk about custom patch workflows and see if one of those fits better for your environment.

[Captainamerica]

I tried to search a bit and "Alerter" shows up - but still seems only to be small notification window on the right. Do you have any other options that could be interesting, if you have any knowledge on custom scripts for apps ?

[sbirdsley]

Might have to leverage JAMF helper to call MAU to update

Currently I am using this script to force Office Updates msupdatehelper

Right now its set to run in the background once per day if system does not match latest Office smart group but looking to change it to be triggered via a JAMF helper prompt to user with cancel/update buttons that cancel or trigger MAU as above

Still testing this with Office 2019 that we haven't fully rolled out to our entire environment

[Captainamerica]

msupdatehelper i used before on 2016 - but have problems with it 2019 and Update are not found running the msupdate

But How Do you use Jamf helper in that process - somehow it must be build into this script

[sbirdsley]

Displaying Messages to Users When Executing Policies

If you want to display a customized message, create a script that calls the JAMF Helper.

The following command calls the JAMF Helper:

/Library/Application Support/JAMF/bin/jamfHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/jamfHelper

The following command displays a list of verbs that can be used to customize the message:

/Library/Application Support/JAMF/bin/jamfHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/jamfHelper -help

Example to complete our Office 2019 upgrade I use the below code and the user sees the below clicking Update will open Self Service in this case but you can setup however you want and for example have the button call a specific policy with sudo jamf policy -event #customeventname

#!/bin/bash

jamfHelper="/Library/Application Support/JAMF/bin/jamfHelper.app/Contents/MacOS/jamfHelper"
windowType="hud"
description="Office 2019 is now available for your system

Click the update button below to open Self Service to begin the update procoess.

The ugrade policy will remain in Self Service until you are ready should you not want to update at this time
"

button1="Update"
button2="Cancel"
icon="/Library/<yourdatalocation><yourfile.icns>"
title="Title"
alignDescription="left"
alignHeading="center"
defaultButton="1"
cancelButton="2"

userChoice=$("$jamfHelper" -windowType "$windowType" -lockHUD -title "$title" -defaultButton "$defaultButton" -cancelButton "$cancelButton" -icon "$icon" -description "$description" -alignDescription "$alignDescription" -alignHeading "$alignHeading" -button1 "$button1" -button2 "$button2")

if [ "$userChoice" == "0" ]; then
    echo "User clicked Update; Now opening Self Service."
    sudo -u $(ls -l /dev/console | awk '{print $3}') open /Applications/Self Service.app
elif [ "$userChoice" == "2" ]; then
    echo "User clicked Cancel or timeout was reached; now exiting."
    exit 0
fi

[Captainamerica]

Thanks for the input. The prompt you show is actually great, but would need to build in some option to ask for office Applications or defer option. But my scripting is by far that not that skilles. Have really searched a lot to find something usable for Office instead just showing the standard notfication the appears shortly that users dont really notice

[sdagley]

@Captainamerica If you want to use the msupdatehelper script with Office 2019 you have to edit the application signatures it contains to reflect that version. By default it specifies the Office 2016 app signatures. For example, MSWD15 needs to be changed to MSWD2019. You'll find 2 signatures for each app that will need to be changed.

[Captainamerica]

Have tried the update script, but if I am enrolling jamf on some macs tha are running very old office versions like 15.27 or something, it does not seems to work even with latest MAU 4.7 installed before.

And - the script will of course autoupdate the products, but it will still not force the users to do any restart of the applicatons to get it working. yes there is the notification that updates are pending, but users don´t do anything on this . So trying to find something useable that can really prompt users and if not done within X days it restart automatically - but not yet found something usable