Predefined Tags for Mobile Devices in Systems Manager

[davidtse916]

Hi all,

I'm coming from a Jamf background and this is just a suggestion here for Systems Manager.  I can see how powerful tags can be in Systems Manager, but I was wondering whether we can create any Predefined Tags so we can use CSV to update them in the future?

Here's what I normally do in Jamf:

- Update an iPad's Mobile Device Name / Department / Building / Room info so we know who's using what and where.

- Use MUT (https://jssmut.weebly.com/) to mass update my school iPads at the end of the year so they're ready for next year.

I can see tags are very flexible in Systems Manager; it would be really great if I can have some Predefined Tags (E.g.: Department / Building / Room) and the ability to update those tags with CSV, that'll make system admin's life a lot easier at the end of the year when we need to mass update student info on the iPads.

Thanks for considering my suggestion, have a nice day 🙂

Regards

David

[PhilipDAth]

Tags don't have values.

So lets say you have tags "BuildingA", "BuildingB" - how could a CSV import work to associate a tag to a device (or are you referring to user tags)?

You might be better off using the "Notes" field.  You can update this via API (instead of using CSV) using this API call:

https://dashboard.meraki.com/api_docs#modify-the-fields-of-a-device 

If you want to change the tags then you can use this API:

https://dashboard.meraki.com/api_docs#add-delete-or-update-the-tags-of-a-set-of-devices 

[davidtse916]

Hi PhilipDAth, thanks for your quick reply 🙂

"how could a CSV import work to associate a tag to a device (or are you referring to user tags)?"

-- That's why I call them "Predefined Tags"; predefined by Systems Manager so you can update them accordingly.

E.g.: Mobile Device Name = blank, Room = blank etc.

Why do we need this?  So can we update my school's 200+ student iPad's "Mobile Device Name / Department / Building / Room" using a CSV.  Jamf can't do that alone, we'll need MUT for that to work.

For my 1:1 iPad school's Jamf setup, each classroom have their own set of apps.  If an iPad belongs to Room 20, it'll get Room 20's app.  I can get the same result using tags in SM at the moment so that's all good; only problem is at the end of the year, I need to update 200+ iPad details manually because students have moved up a year / moved on from the primary school.  Before MUT comes along, I had to do this manually for each iPad, but with MUT, I can use update a CSV file and ask MUT to update the "Mobile Device Name / Department / Building / Room" accordingly; I can update all of the student's iPad in a few seconds.  I was wondering whether this feature will be useful in SM so System Admins can update iPad info easily rather than do it one iPad at a time.

"You might be better off using the "Notes" field. You can update this via API (instead of using CSV) using this API call:"

-- Sorry I'm not much of a software developer myself.

[davidtse916]

These are the fields we normally update in Jamf for the student iPads:

Mobile Device Name = student's first name and last name.

Department, Building and Room info for app install & lock screen.

[vassallon]

@davidtse916 What about using tags based on owners? I import all of my users from ASM and then add in Meraki tags to the owner based on school and grad year to push out apps. You can also use ASM Groups to deploy apps based on specific classrooms. 

For example here is an App we push out and some of the various tags we utilize.

[davidtse916]

Hi vassallon, thanks for your suggestion regarding ASM Groups / Accounts / Classes.  Before we discovered MUT we did give ASM a try, the only problem is that we don't have SIS and we can't use SFTP at work (we're behind a firewall, the only way to get SFTP to work is to use our personal phone's hotspot).  From memory SFTP setup in ASM works pretty much like MUT, you just upload a CSV everytime you need to update the ASM database, but with our limitations we gave up on ASM Groups / Accounts / Classes in the end.

[vassallon]

@davidtse916 

With ASM you can build classes by hand and add students by hand. We have a couple of use cases where we have hand built classes in addition to the SFTP uploaded. 

I would love to know more about your situation as it seems odd that a school cannot open SFTP to allow a connection for ASM.

Even using ASM with handbuilt classes seems like a decent option compared to your choices with Meraki as about all you are limited to is CSV imports of owners.

https://documentation.meraki.com/SM/Other_Topics/Owners

[davidtse916]

Hi vassallon, thanks for your reply 🙂

"With ASM you can build classes by hand and add students by hand. We have a couple of use cases where we have hand built classes in addition to the SFTP uploaded."
-- I thought about this in the beginning but there are two reason I don't want to do this by hand: 1) we have 200+ students in one of the schools we looked after, I would rather not spend all day creating them one by one; 2) when I had Jamf, their support told me I can't intergrate Apple Education Support unless I fill out a two fields on ASM, or else the class info won't sync properly.  From what I can see those fields can't be entered manually, I had to use the SIS / SFTP option.

"it seems odd that a school cannot open SFTP to allow a connection for ASM."

-- The firewall we have is pretty strict; we're only allowed to use port 80 and 443.  From memory SFTP uses TCP port 22?  I might be able to use configure my SFTP client to use port 80, but the firewall might be smarter than that and able to inspect the traffic regardless of changing the port.  I also looked at VPN options but I probably need to sign some paperwork / do risk assessment before I go ahead.

Then....I found MUT!  That solved all of my problems (with Jamf), so I stopped trying.  I'd like to get ASM Classes / Roles etc. setup in the future so I can intergrate Apple Classroom + Jamf / Meraki, but right now it's a little 'too hard' for me because I really don't want to use my hotspot everytime I need to upload something using SFTP.