Searching for less-than app versions

[Jason-]

If a certain app has a bug or a security flaw that is patched in a later version, and I want to know which Macs are still running any unpatched versions, is there no way to easily find that through advanced computer search?  Sure, I could try to export results and manipulate the spreadsheet, but seriously am I missing something?  Because that seems like it should be a very basic search function.

[junjishimazaki]

Hi, you can create a smart group with 2 criterias. One is the "Application Title" use the "Is" operator with name of the app keep the "And" condition and the second criteria "Application Version" use the "Is not" operator with the version of the latest version of that app.

[cbrewer]

Some of us prefer using regex matching for this. Regex will allow you to match against a version number or higher. See the following script for help generating the regex.

https://gist.github.com/talkingmoose/2cf20236e665fcd7ec41311d50c89c0e 

[cbrewer]

And maybe someday Jamf will implement this feature request for higher than or less than application versions.

https://ideas.jamf.com/ideas/JN-I-21264 

[sdagley · Accepted solution]

@cbrewer That functionality is actually supported now, but only for Patch Reporting titles. If you've got patch reporting enabled you'll have an option named Patch Reporting Software Title under Show Advanced Criteria when creating a Smart Group. Choose that criteria and you'll get a list of all your active Patch Reporting titles. When you add one of them as a criteria your operator options are is, is not, greater than, less than, greater than or equal, and less than or equal.

[mt-nw]

Is it truly implemented though? The feature only works if the application is part of Patch Management. There are a ton of apps that Patch Management doesn't support. So again, we're left with a half-baked 'solution'. Not your fault, of course. I'm just ranting.

[sdagley]

@mt-nw For things not in Patch Management, or for users who don't have access to Patch Management, using a regex in a Smart Group Application Version criteria works well, and https://github.com/moorereason/make_ge_version_regex/blob/master/make_ge_version_regex.sh,remains my preferred tool for creating those.

[sdagley]

What @cbrewer said, but if you want the Smart Group to reflect Macs running versions older than the one the regex is created for the criteria would be "Does Not Match Regex".

I'd also suggest using https://github.com/moorereason/make_ge_version_regex/blob/master/make_ge_version_regex.sh, which is an optimized version of https://gist.github.com/talkingmoose/2cf20236e665fcd7ec41311d50c89c0e

[Jason-]

Thank you for these suggestions, all.  I will look into them!