Pushing App Store Apps to remote machines

NCSD
New Contributor II

Disclaimer - JAMF is a new feature for us, so please be patient with me while I try to muddle my way through this.

Long story short, I'm erasing the HDD and reinstalling the OS on all of our MacBooks. On some of the MacBooks, we need to have GarageBand installed. Under Mac App Store Apps, we have GarageBand Enabled with the App URL and Bundle Identifier, etc. Set Distribution Method to Install Automatically. I created a scope for testing [blandly named GarageBandTest] and added two machines to that scope.

I've gotten the application icon to show up in the Finder on both of the machines, but when I double-click it, I have to download the 2.15gb application manually.

So, question: What do I have to do to make JAMF actually install the application as opposed to just an icon that still requires manual interaction? If I need to put GarageBand on 75 machines, I'd rather not have to go to all 75 and double-click the icon, come back 30 minutes later and decline the optional 14gb of free sounds, etc.

4 REPLIES 4

sbirdsley
Contributor

Have you looked at AppStore Extractor

This is what I use to capture App Store download installs to distribute on our internal network versus a user going out to Internet to download through App Store which we restrict regardless

NCSD
New Contributor II

I have not. Should I take your response to mean that JAMF won't actually install the applications, but will instead download a stub icon a'la Firefox that will then require a manual execution?

sdamiano
Contributor II

Not necessarily.

If you want Garage Band to install from the App Store on to these Mac's, you're going to want to do the following steps.

  1. Ensure your Volume Purchase Program ID is set up and it's certificate is in your JSS.
  2. "purchase" as many copies of Garage Band as you would like from the VPP website.
  3. Once you receive an email from Apple stating that your VPP purchase is available, navigate to your JSS
  4. Click on Computers, and then click on Mac App Store Apps
  5. Create a new policy for Garage Band. On the assign VPP content page, make sure your App Store purchase is visible there.

If you so choose you can then select it to either automatically install, or for it to be in Self Service. If it is set to auto-install, computers should receive a push notification to then reach out to the app store to install the app within a minute or two of you saving this policy.

NCSD
New Contributor II

Thanks for that info, SD. I just checked what I had done and I did indeed follow all 5 of those steps. It's set to auto-install; I'll run another machine and see what it does. The first two I tested downloaded the stub that I mentioned in the OP, but I'll try again.