School District Smart Groups

[#1]

I work for a school district with ~3500 computers. There isn't a specific model machine that we have for all our staff and our all student computers so that makes creating smart groups difficult. I wanted to see what other school districts are doing doing to create groups either smart or static. Eventually we plan to re-image all of our student machines so they will pass through Casper Imaging in the near future but long term and for policy I would like to have groups.

-Adam

Adam Shepard
Creighton School District
Web Developer / System Administrator
[Office 602-381-6000][Cell 602-319-8935]

[#2]

Well, I guess it depends on why you want smart groups and polcies and what you want to do with them.

We have smart groups for each our buildings, then type of user (teacher or student) and type of OS(10.3, 10.4, 10.5). But it really depends on what you need.

--

Sent from my iPhone

[#3]

we have about 6000 laptops that we organize using smart groups based on computer name. Each high school has a specific prefix for their building
and the name contains their asset number that each laptop is assgned ie AAA_KCK01234
and the group is made up as Computer Name like AAA.

Mark Hughes

Mark Hughes, Apple Technician
TIS Department, KCKPS USD500
Cell 913-449-7791
mahughe at kckps.org

[#4]

Each of our schools has their own prefix and asset tag as well. CS-123456 would be an example. The problem is that we have that same naming convention for all our computers, whether it is a desktop or laptop, teacher or student machine. I can easily do smart groups for each site and that works well for things that I need to install at a site on all their computers but we have some specific software for teachers and some for students.

As we have 9 schools the ultimate goal would be to have a group for students at each site and a group for teachers giving us a total of 18 groups.

[#5]

Well, weeding out desktop vs. laptop isn't that difficult. Set Hardware
Info -> Model like MacBook or Not Like MacBook if you want desktops. Of
course if you have older PowerBooks you'll need to change that.

As far as teacher vs. student, I'll be Miles to the punch: dummy package.
Set a dummy package to drop a receipt and the scope on that receipt. You
could set two different receipts, one for teacher and one for student.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integerdallas.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475

[#6]

I think the dummy package will work perfectly. The remaining criteria for groups are in the JSS already so I shall have a productive day at work tomorrow.

[tlarkin]

You can make smart groups out of any search criteria. Naming convention is an easy one and that is what we use, however you can do it by OS version, hardware configuration (like how much RAM, or HD space), and then you can also go in and chop up all your VLANs into network segments in the JSS. So, if you know that IP range 10.10.10.10 ~ 10.10.20.250 is a specific building you can make a smart group based on the network segment. You can also create buildings in the JSS and apply network segments as well.

So you can easily do location based smart groups. Dummy packages are another great tool. I use a dummy package system to tell what Macs have Windows installed on them, and which ones do not.

---

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
blackberry: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

[#8]

Yeah we do that as well, but ours has building name, then Mac or PC, then T for teacher and no T for student, then the asset tag. IE:

BdgMacT01222

Makes it very easy to pick teacher vs student, as well as the building they are in.

-Matt

[John_Wetter]

We set almost all of our smart groups based on name, for the exact reason you mention. Some of our labs are made up of various types of computers but as long as their name contains a specific string, say ABC-Lab3-01. In this case, ABC is the school, Lab3 is the name of the lab, and 01 is computer number one. Now I can create a smart Group based either on the school, the lab, or the computer number 1's. In many cases our computer #1 is a teacher computer, so that would need some special/different attention from the rest of the lab.

This is also nice as if it's an older lab of eMacs or old lamp-shade iMacs, if one dies, you remove/rename it in the JSS, put another one in, name it the same and your group is still set correctly. No need to do any changes to the group.

We're in the process of deleting as many static groups as absolutely possible.

Thanks,
John

--
John Wetter
Technology Support Administrator
Educationsl Technology, Media & Information Services
Hopkins Public Schools
952-988-5373

[dustydorey]

Looks like there are some good answers here already but I thought I'd
throw what we do out too.
We have 36+ different buildings, (schools and admin buildings) each
building has it's own prefix wich is two or three letters based on it's
name for instance Oak Ridge Elementary is OR or the District Office is
DO Then that is followed by an indicator of what type of users it is
T=Teacher, S=Student, A=Administrator Then it goes to location based
naming such as room number, lab, or cart number. If it is a lab or
cart machine the last chunk is then an additional number so for a lab at
Oak ridge it would look something like this OR-S-Lab1-23 For Oak
Ridge Elem. Student machine, Lab 1, seat 23. I then can build
several smart groups that a particular machine would fall into.
Anything that starts with OR- goes in the Oak ridge smart group, I can
then make anything that is OR-S- fall into a student group, then
anything with OR-S-Lab goes into a lab smartgroup and anything with
OR-S-Lab1 goes into the lab1 smart group. Another reason I like doing
it that way is if a computer dies or something, if you replace it and
image the new computer with the same naming convention that new computer
will then fall into whatever policies have been applied to that
particular smart group. I have smart groups for several buildings that contain all of the labs
and mini labs and then I have management policies applied to them. And
quit often throughout the year machines are swapped in and out of those
labs and mini labs for other uses. As long as the building level tech
images it with the correct naming convention they automatically fall
into the smart groups and thus into the correct policies too. Works well for us at least. Also if you want to then build hardware specific smart groups you can
make the smart group with several variables. Such as name like OR-S and
hardware architecture is PowerPC. So when we have to push something
out to all student machines that are PPC we just drop in that smart
group to a policy and tell the building tech to reboot or whatever
trigger we want and it just goes.

-Dusty-

Dustin Dorey
Technology Support Cluster Specialist
Independant School District 196
Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools
dustin.dorey at district196.org
651|423|7971