What is macOS Onboarding?

[piotrr]

I'm watching the release video, I am reading the release notes, I am reading the Jamf Pro documentation page and I still don't get it - does macOS onboarding replace the current workflow for installing and running Policies, Configuration Profiles and Applications, does it delay their installation until after Self Service has started? 

I have some pretty...fragile workflows all depending on each other, like the installation of Company Portal and Jamf Connect at Prestage, and configuration profiles for most managed applications. Does "macOS onboarding" just toss all that out and replace it, or is this yet another way to install and launch policies, configuration profiles and applications? 

Or have I misunderstood completely? 

[sharriston]

It is a nicer wrapper for running intital policies on Macs. It's in the same vein as Setup your Mac or DEPNotify. It gives the end user a UI explaining what's being installed and it calls policies in the order you set. 

[piotrr]

I have never seen the point of those tools except verbosity that my users do not need. I prefer onboarding and installations to take place in the background, and as I said, some of them must run before desktop, or before other policies. 

I agree that it is a nice thing to finally be able to determine the order in which policies and configuration profiles are installed, so that I do not have to Recon/verify that Thing A has been installed before Thing B can run, and so on. 

But if this implementation replaces what we've done so far, pretty much requires me to tear out all the workarounds I've built and replace them with this, if it's even possible. Plus of course all of the work that would have to go into duplicating existing policies and configuration profiles and scoping them only for macOS onboarding. 

If I were setting up Jamf Pro all over again, this would be great... but I just can't see how to get from where I am to where this would help me at all. 

[sharriston]

You can leave it off. The beauty of this (although there are still a lot of features needed to compete with the other two options I mentioned) is that all you need to do to make a policy available for Onboarding is make it a Self Service policy. 

[piotrr]

Leaving it off does seem like the best option. I imagine if someone had set up the competing options, they would be in the same situation I am where the solution they have does not translate very well into the new Onboarding option.