macadmin.fraserhess.com

Discoveries and solutions from my work administering Mac computers.

  • Building Zoom Rooms Mac minis with Jamf Setup Manager

    UPDATE 1/13/2025: Thanks to a very helpful comment, I was able to remove the need for a manual login during this process. This is the third in a series of posts about Jamf Setup Manager. Read the first post to learn more about our decision to use it as our preferred tool for provisioning Macs.…

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  • Updating inventory after Zoom Rooms automatic update

    When I deployed Zoom Rooms on Mac minis earlier this year, I assumed that the built-in automatic update functionality would run as the logged-in user. Our logged-in user for Zoom Rooms is not an admin, so I believed that an automatic app update would either fail or prompt for admin credentials. That would be a…

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  • Corporate firewall rule for RCS on iOS

    iOS 18 supports Rich Communication Services (RCS) for a richer messaging experience with other mobile platforms. On our corporate networks, we found that RCS messages were not being received by clients. Our network policies are “deny all, permit by exception”, so our security team dug in to fix it. They found blocks for multiple carrier-related…

  • Building Mac mini servers with Jamf Setup Manager

    This is the second in a series of posts about Jamf Setup Manager. Read the first post to learn more about our decision to use it as our preferred tool for provisioning Macs. Provisioning a server is the simplest of our Setup Manager provisioning processes. Prior to using Setup Manager, we had no formal process…

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  • Going all in on Jamf Setup Manager

    I first became aware of Jamf Setup Manager during JNUC 2023. It is a tool for provisioning Macs and at that time it was in private beta. Developed by Jamf consulting engineers in Europe, it was recommended to me as a means of provisioning before any user logs in. Jamf Setup Manager’s primary mode is…

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