Safe Exam Browser Deployment Help

[Durkin]

Trying to deploy the Safe Exam Browser on our student MacBook Airs and I am having some issues getting the configuration to stay. I was originally creating the package(.pkg) using Composer, but when the students download the package from Self Service the settings are reverted back to the defaults.

When I created it as a DMG and check the boxes to Fill user templates and existing home directories the settings come down as they should, but the end user is being prompted for a keychain password. However, it is not wanting the keychain password of the currently logged in user. It wants the keychain password of the user account I was logged in with when the package was created.

Has anyone recently deployed the Safe Exam browser successfully? The only post I can find is where someone says they have done it, but they don't outline how they were able to do this.

In theory I could use the pkg that I first created and then use a script to copy the .seb configuration file the machines, but I'm pretty weak at scripting. Plus when I tried to put the file in the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder as outlined in the instructions it tells me that it is unconfigured.

[Asnyder]

Double check your permissions being set on the pkg in composer.

[Josh_Smith]

I don't know anything about this app, but using a config profile or script for the configuration part of the installation is generally the way to go. This would allow you to build in some logic to make sure the settings are correct in a variety of scenarios, you could make a more robust solution.

Alternatively you could also just clean up your captured package a little bit, sounds like you need to remove ~/Library/Keychains from your capture before you create the DMG in composer. There are likely other files you need to cleanup as well, anything not directly related to the install or settings for the app. Just delete them in the composer window before you build the DMG.

[kendalljjohnson]

We just had our first use of it in a lab of iMac's this week.

I used Composer to package the app in the Applications folder (755 root:wheel permissions) and pushed it out. For our scenario, we didn't need settings always configured so we had the .seb file for this specific exam packaged and pushed out to the /Users/Shared/ folder for the students to launch when the test took place.

The professor was very happy with the use case, we'll probably look to having it used on a larger scale for testing scenarios in our labs.

[bethlehemacadem]

Durkin, I am curious what solution you came up with for deploying Safe Exam Browser. I am looking to deploy it to our student MacBook Airs as our PowerSchool assessment piece includes Safe Exam Browser as an option.

[Chris_Hafner]

We've been using SEB here for a while. @kendalljjohnson has the right of it. Just push the app to /Applications and make sure that you get the .seb setting file to the students somehow. We throw the .seb file on the users desktop instead of /Users/Shared as it's distributed optionally to students, via Self-Service.

[tpeterson]

Have you continued to use the SEB with M1 silicon devices? We want to use if for the Edgenuity site, both course work and tests.  Any documents/directions you could provide would be great!

Thanks,

[Chris_Hafner]

We do not. Fortunately, all of the tests we support now use commercial secure testing browsers (NWEA/MAP, BlueBook, Respondus, etc). What is the difficulty you're having? it does look to be fully supported still.