If you’re not using any enrollment progress tool in your Mac Environment now, or if you’re shopping for a replacement, consider Jamf Setup Manager.
When exploring options, we wanted something easy to configure. Something we’d be able to set and forget. And if configurations needed tweaking later, it’d be easy to update.
I am lazy. There, I said it.
Enter Jamf Setup Manager (JSM).
Setup Manager is the best gift I gave myself this Holiday Season. The best part is that we pass this onboarding experience to our customers and technicians.
No heavy lifting. No scripting skills are needed. Just add these two ingredients and you’re on your way.
- The Setup Manager Package
- A new Setup Manager configuration profile
- Add the two items to your Prestage
The folks at Jamf added a QuickStart guide to help you get started. I’d recommend giving this a read. This helped me generate ideas for customizing Setup Manager for my organization (more on that below).
Here’s what I liked and some notes I needed to get started.
Jamf Policy with Triggers
Setup Manager uses policies with triggers. We had policies already configured this way. So, when we set up a new configuration profile, our existing Jamf policies rolled right into the profile.
Installomater to the rescue
For additional software that needed installation, we took advantage of Installomater. Pay attention to the labels and review titles that your organization requires. I added the application titles to the configuration profile and customized the order I wanted them installed.
Nice.
Installomater is a timesaver. There’s no need for the Mac Admin to download packages and upload them to Jamf. No need to keep these packages updated, too. Installomater will install the latest and greatest during computer provisioning. This ensures the Mac has the latest software.
Less work for me. Less work for the user. Your security team is happy. We hand over the computer with updated apps.
Very nice.
Making the enrollment experience unique
Customizing the user experience was my favorite part. This is where the fun is. Here, you can customize icons with your organization’s branding. The configuration allows admins to enter titles and messages to help customers during enrollment.
Smart cards are used in our shop. We also deployed the Microsoft Platform SSO configuration for testing after attending the Jamf Nation User Conference this year. I wanted a way to integrate this marriage with JSM.
I use Setup Manager to alert my customers and technicians. It’s more than just for installing software and configurations. Maybe you want the user to have their smart card ready. Or maybe you want them to prepare for the Microsoft Platform SSO registration dialog.
It’s also possible to add “wait” times between the actions. This gives the user extra pauses between configurations to read dialog or wait for user entry, like asset information.
Things to learn
JSM introduced me to SF Symbols. There’s a way to add animations to the symbols, giving you
additional options to customize the experience. I need to spend a little more time here, but I think that’s something worth diving into later when feeling less lazy.
Under the Action options, we didn’t dive deep into options like Shell Command, Watch Path, or Wait for User Entry. To get things up for testing, we pulled in policies that existed in our Jamf Pro instance. There’s more to explore and test.
If the developers are reading this, please add more use-case examples and notes. It helps.
Known Issues
Like all new products, bugs exist. We were grateful to get assistance from some engineers who developed JSM.
I recommend reading the known issues before starting implementation. The FAQ page is helpful as well. Start there before starting the actual work.
At the time of this writing, I am running into an issue where my Setup Manager enrollment package in the Prestage isn’t installing at enrollment. Jamf Engineers mentioned a product issue (PI122573) with Jamf Pro 11.11 where Prestage packages don’t include MD5 value.
For now, the workaround is to deploy the enrollment package with a manifest file or wait for Jamf Pro 11.12.
We got around this by creating a separate policy with an enrollment trigger to install the Setup Manager package. This isn’t recommended because the JSM may not start immediately after the Setup Assistant. For testing purposes, I was okay with this.
(Update: The Jamf Pro 11.12 upgrade fixed PI122573!)
The Holiday Gift of Setup Manager
Setting up JSM was easy. I stood up test instances in a day.
The documentation was easy to follow. The tool is highly configurable (read: customizable). The user interface is nice to stare at.
This will improve the user experience for customers and technicians. It’s now clearer what’s happening in the background. Because Setup Manager runs right after Setup Assistant, the Mac is provisioned the way you desire.
We’re confident we’ll be able to maintain future configuration changes. Our organization is looking forward to JSM updates under the Jamf Concepts page. I’m curious to see how others are using JSM in Jamf Nation as well.
If you’re shopping for a last-minute Holiday present, give yourself the gift of Jamf Setup Manager. I did. Happy Holidays!
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