Once the Apple Configurator 2 Command Line Tools are installed, you’ll find a binary called cfgutil at /Applications/Apple Configurator 2.app/Contents/MacOS/cfgutil. The cfgutil command has a number of verbs you can see by running the command followed by the help verb, as follows: /Applications/Apple\ Configurator\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/cfgutil help The following is a list of officially supported verbs: activate: activate iOS and iPadOS devices. add-tags: add a tag for iOS and iPadOS devices. backup: Create a backup of an iOS or iPadOS device the Configurator computer has prepared. clear-passcode: Clear the passcode a supervised iOS or iPad OS device. erase: Erase any content and settings configured on any supervised iOS and iPadOS devices. exec:…
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Get The Title Of An App From Apple App Store URLs
When you’re building and manipulating apps in the Apple App Stores, it helps to be able to pull and parse pieces of data. Here, we’ll look at two strategies that you can use to do so. It’s worth noting that the purpose of this was to use the URL of an app from an MDM and then be able to script updating metadata about the app, given that vendors often change names of the display name of an app (e.g. Yelp is actually called “Yelp: Discover Local Favorites on the App Store”). First, we’ll grab a URL. This one is for Self Service: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/self-service-mobile/id718509958?mt=8 If you don’t know the URL…
- Apple Configurator, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPhone, JAMF, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mass Deployment, precache
Tethered Caching of iOS Assets from macOS 10.12.4
There is a new service in macOS, called Tetherator. Tethered-caching is a script that allows you to easily and quickly interact with the tethered-caching service, which has a few kinda’ cool options. This is on a client, and really speeds up all that crazy provisioning stuff you do. It can also check for the presence of a macOS Caching Server and use that as a source for the cache. The tethered-caching script is located at /usr/bin/tethered-caching. Before you do anything with the service, check the status. That’s done with the -s option (there’s also a -v option to get verbose): tethered-caching -s The results before activated should be as follows:…
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Choose An Existing Supervision Identity in Apple Configurator
When using Apple Configurator, you can assign an existing supervision identity to be used with devices you place into supervision. To do so, first open Apple Configurator and click on Organizations. From Organizations, click on the plus sign (“+”). From the Create an Organization screen, click Next. When prompted to provide information about your organization, provide the name, phone, email, and/or address of the organization. If you are importing an identity, select “Choose an existing supervision identity” and click on Next. When prompted, click Choose to select the identity to use (e.g. exported from another instance of Apple Configurator or from Profile Manager). Click Choose when you’ve highlighted the appropriate…
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Automator Actions for the Caspers
Looks like Sal et al posted a suite of Automator Actions to link the Casper Suite to Apple Configurator at https://configautomation.com/jamf-actions.html. In my limited tests so far they work pretty darn well! Some pretty cool things here, like having the JSS rename a mobile device when managed through Apple Configurator, having Apple Configurator instruct the JSS to remove a device from a group, clear passcodes, update inventory, and other common tasks involved in workflows when leveraging Apple Configurator for en masse device management. Good stuff!
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Securing Patient Data on End User Computing Devices (AMA)
The increase in the use and complexity of technological assets in the healthcare sector has been on the rise in the recent past. Healthcare practitioners have moved from recording data manually to keeping Electronic Health Records. This eases the accessibility and the availability of data to the health practitioners. Further, electronically stored data makes it possible for patients to receive high quality and error-free care, improve decision making process because medical history is available and also makes it possible to provide safer and more reliable information for medication. Despite, the numerous advantages that the use of technology in healthcare has, there is also a threat of patients data leakage that…
- Apple Configurator, Articles and Books, Business, iPhone, JAMF, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mac Security, Mass Deployment
Reddit AMA Going Now
An hour into my first Reddit AMA with some super-excellent JAMFs! AMA w/ Charles Edge and the Apple management experts at JAMF Software from macsysadmin
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My Presentation on Evaluating Partners from ACES Conference
Last week, I gave a presentation on criteria for evaluating partners, managing revenue streams and partner channel programs. The presentation, given on May 4th, is available below. The file is ACES_Partners
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Enable Apple Configurator Debug Logs
Apple Configurator 2 is a great tool. But you need to debug things from time to time. This might mean that a profile is misconfigured and not installing, or that a device can’t perform a task you are sending it to be performed. This is about the time that you need to enable some debug logs. To do so, quit Apple Configurator and then write a string of ALL into the ACULogLevel key in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.configurator.ui/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.configurator.ui.plist: defaults write ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.configurator.ui/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.configurator.ui.plist ACULogLevel -string ALL To disable, quit Apple Configurator and then delete that ACULogLevel key: defaults delete ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.configurator.ui/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.configurator.ui.plist ACULogLevel
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Scripting The OS X Caching Server To Cache Updates
The Caching Server in OS X is a little bit of a black box. But, it’s not all that complicated, compared to some things in the IT world. I’d previously written about command line management of the service itself here. When you enable the caching service, the server registers itself as a valid Caching Server. Nearby devices then lookup the closest update server with Apple and register with that update server using a GUID: /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/serveradmin settings caching:ServerGUID Then, each time the device looks for an update, it does so against http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml using the device model. Noticed this with this line in my proxy logs: "GET http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-"…