16 articles tagged
MDM. All tags.
You know Jamf Pro. You do not know this Jamf Pro environment. Before you fix anything in an inherited environment, triage it: identify what is actively broken, what is functional but messy, and what you should leave alone.
Work the critical list: renew expiring credentials, resolve profile conflicts, repair broken enrollment, and build the safety net that protects every change you make from here.
The fires are out. Now work the cleanup list: break apart monolithic profiles, consolidate duplicate policies, retire dead weight, and build the operational foundation that makes this environment yours.
On both platforms, Chrome updates itself through Google's own updater. On Windows you governed it through ADMX; on macOS you govern it through a managed preference profile. Here is the translation.
Windows admins reach for PPPC to 'disable the webcam' and hit a wall. PPPC controls per-app TCC policy; Restrictions disables hardware. Here's the real map — with working profiles and the limits Apple enforces.
Your first week as a new Jamf Pro administrator is reconnaissance. Inventory the environment — enrollment paths, policies, configuration profiles, smart groups, integrations — before you change anything.
You have inventoried the environment. Now watch how it behaves. Week two is about understanding the jamf binary, the check-in cycle, policy execution, logs, and scoping — without touching production.
You know what exists and how it behaves. Week three is about making changes safely — privilege design, blast radius awareness, APNs, and a three-stage testing pattern you follow every time.
You have inventoried the environment, watched it operate, and made your first safe changes. Week four is about assessing what needs to improve, building a backlog, and leaving the environment better than you found it.
Explains the shift from XML configuration profiles to DDM JSON declarations, mapping legacy payload concepts to Type, Identifier, ServerToken, and Payload.
Shows how to build DDM Configuration and Activation declarations with PowerShell objects, arrays, nested hashtables, predicates, and ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10.
Explains the supported Jamf Pro path for custom DDM declarations: deploy with Blueprints, authenticate to the API, and verify DSS and DDM status data.
Explains why legacy macOS MDM's polling model creates a server-side bottleneck: APNs, mdmclient, command queues, and the computational cost of repeated delta calculations.
How the macOS client becomes an autonomous desired-state engine: parsing declarations, evaluating predicates, applying configurations, and enforcing state without waiting for server commands.
How DDM status subscriptions let Apple devices report subscribed state changes without legacy inventory polling, using status item key paths, delta reports, FullReport, and Base64 JSON.
A translation guide for senior Windows administrators on moving from Active Directory Group Policy Objects to Apple MDM Configuration Profiles for macOS fleet management.