Skype for Business install via Policy gotcha

[sdagley]

I encountered a problem installing Skype for Business with a Self Service policy today. Package payload for the Policy is the Skype for Business .pkg download from Microsoft. Test deployment didn't reveal any problems. Put into production and start to see reports install doesn't work for some users. Checking policy log shows no errors, but end result is no Skype for Business installed. Try running the installer directly and get prompted to quit Safari and Microsoft Outlook before continuing. Whatever is triggering that prompt doesn't show up in the .pkg scripts when inspecting it via Suspicious Package. Anybody know if there are other apps besides Safari and Microsoft Outlook on the Skype installers naughty list? And shouldn't the installer exit with a failure if the running app test fails when running in non-interactive mode?

Dropping an @pbowden mention to seek his input.

[dsavageED]

Suspicious Package is great, but it doesn't show you everything about a package. I've used Pacifist for a while, which will show you a fuller picture of the installer. In this case what you need to see is the Distribution file, which contains:

<pkg-ref id="com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness">
   <must-close>
       <app id="com.apple.Safari"/>
       <app id="org.mozilla.firefox"/>
       <app id="com.microsoft.SkypeForBusiness"/>
       <app id="com.microsoft.Lync"/>
       <app id="com.microsoft.Outlook"/>
    </must-close>

[sdagley]

@dsavageED Thanks for the explanation (and the Pacifist referral). Seems odd that if there's a must-close list the non-interactive install process wouldn't report a failure instead of no error.

[dsavageED]

I'd agree it is a bit odd. The only workaround I can think of (that doesn't involve re-packaging) is to add a script to the policy to do a check if any of those apps are running and throw up a jamfhelper or applescript message.

[tguyers360]

I had a similar error and ended out repackaging .... not the best solution but I needed to get Skype to our users.

[tguyers360]

I had a similar error and ended out repackaging .... not the best solution but I needed to get Skype to our users.

[AVmcclint]

I put a note in the Self Service policy telling users to quit these apps before they run it. Users being users, I just created a script to run BEFORE the pkg anyway.

#!/bin/bash

# MS Skype For Business requires that Safari, Firefox, Skype for Business, Lync, and
# Outlook must be quit before the installer can run. Otherwise the installer will fail.
# This will gracefully quit the apps, but if files need to be saved, the script will wait until the user saves or discards.

osascript -e 'quit app "Microsoft Outlook"'
osascript -e 'quit app "Firefox"'
osascript -e 'quit app "Skype for Business"'
osascript -e 'quit app "Safari"'

#pkill on Lync because it is a pain in the ass to gracefully quit
pkill Lync

exit 0

[pbowden]

Thanks for the feedback @sdagley and @AVmcclint. I've put a request into the Skype for Business team as we should be able to make a modification to the postinstall script, and introduce a preinstall script to take care of these issues automatically when installing with Jamf Pro.

Thanks, Paul.

[pbowden]

Hate to ask you to do this @sdagley and @AVmcclint , but if either of you have a Premier account, can you raise a ticket for this, and ask it to be routed to Sustained Engineering (SE) for inclusion in the next version of SfB for Mac?

Thanks! Paul.

[sdagley]

@pbowden No problem (other than I don’t know what level our MS account is, but I’ll find out). Thanks for the info on how to escalate this.

[pbowden]

@sdagley thanks. The Skype for Business bug bar is high, and their triage team will only fix it if the request comes directly from a Premier customer, and not from another engineering team like mine. I sent them the fix already, so if you can, reference Epic:1465094 and they should know exactly what to do!

Thanks! Paul.

[sdagley]

@pbowden I had that request submitted via our Premier support account, but have now gotten word back that the design change was rejected by the product group (which I presume is the Skype for Business team). Thanks for looking into the problem, I'll just script around it for future installations.