On 2020/02/06, there was a great post on ScriptingOSX on using Installomator with Jamf Pro. Today, I finally got around to it on my Todo list.
Jamf Pro has quite an extensive list of software titles within its Patch Managment feature, but it is very much something I am still getting to grips with.
There are some applications that are constantly updating, especially these days, and keeping on top of your patching and update cycles is incredibly important. Far too many times have I seen fleets of machines running an out of date piece of software when it was assumed that it was updating itself. But this is usually easier said than done.
Roll up Installomator! As it mentions on the Github page, keeping on top of downloading the latest packages and making sure they are on your system can be a royal pain in the arse and while we have an external distribution point for our users during this time of work from home, that means downloading/uploading to primary/syncing to external. What a faff. So for some apps that update regularly, why not take this burden away and download over the intertubes when required? This is what Installomator is attempting to do.
With it very much in its infancy, I'm only going to test this on one or two applications right now, namely Chrome & Firefox. But if it works then that will free up a little bit more of my time. There's a saying, not that I'm sure where it originates but it's something along the lines of
Automate yourself out of a job
When I first heard that I thought "fuck no". But over the years I've learnt that the more you automate and simplify it, the more time you can spend learning new things and improving what you've already done. So, "automate yourself out of a job" could mean the "job" of updating packages, not literally your "job". That's how I'm going to interpret it anyway.
The two browsers are setup with their policies so I'm going to see how this plays out over the next few updates. Fingers crossed.