Patch Management - ability to specific "Latest version - X"?

T_Armstrong
Contributor

I expect I know the answer to this, but... just in case anyone else smarter than me figured out an approach:

I'm looking for a way to create a smart group that basically says "Computers with App more than "x" version out of date. The scenario I'm working with is that I want to use Self-Service to offer updates to users who are on N-1 or N-2 versions back, but if anyone is MORE than two versions out of date, I want to force the update with a 2nd policy, automatic.

I know I can do this manually, creating a smart group and plugging in the version criteria, but managing this across 50+ apps would get a bit... "tiresome".

An example from my end: Google Chrome.
We currently have auto update enabled, but on any given day, due to Chrome's requirement to restart the app to complete the update, I usually have 30-40% of users on current version, about 20% one or two versions back, and then the rest may reflect 15-20 different, older versions. I'm trying to target that last group and force them to update, while allowing the "more responsible" users who normally stay more or less on top of SelfService updates to continue.

Anyone develop a scenario for something like this?

2 REPLIES 2

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

As far as I'm aware, there's no simple way to do this using Jamf's built in patch reporting, unless I'm very unaware of some hidden feature (always possible). I believe it just keeps a list of the versions since it started tracking that app, but I'm not sure if it has an easy way to know if an app is 1, 2, 3 or whatever versions behind. Just that it's up to date or not.

There may be a way to get this using the API though, in case that interests you.

tlarkin
Honored Contributor

You can do this in code, or with other tools, but not really with jamf. however, I have requested this feature request that could handle this. I also ended up writing my own automation instead of using Patch that just installs the latest version always, here is my github