Three months ago, we highlighted our biggest takeaways from Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, including enrollment, security, identity and more. I’m circling back to provide an update in light of the release of Jamf Pro 10.15, a major step forward that delivers support and new features around some of the biggest changes in Apple’s new operating systems.
Day-zero support
Day-zero support is a really big deal in our world. If you’re brand new to managing Apple devices, you’re likely wondering how you can best manage the new Apple operating systems, including macOS Catalina, iPadOS 13, iOS 13 and tvOS 13.
For eight years running, we have been committed to empowering you to not only survive operating system updates but to thrive during this critical time of year. This year we are once again delivering compatibility and key feature support for the new Apple operating systems on the day they are released.
Jamf Pro 10.15 ensures that you’ll be able to start deploying or testing the new operating systems immediately without interruption. Additionally, the rest of our product portfolio — Jamf Now, Jamf School and Jamf Connect — is day-zero compatible.
User Enrollment
Personally-owned devices are almost certainly a significant part of your IT strategy. From small organizations to multi-national enterprises, employees have made it clear that they prefer to use Apple devices outside of work and want the ability to bring their personally-owned devices into the workplace to access organizationally-controlled systems like email and messaging.
Recognizing this trend, Jamf proactively limited the amount of control admins had over personally-owned devices a few years ago. Today, we are again evolving how we deliver a user experience that is both secure and private by supporting Apple’s new User Enrollment functionality.
User Enrollment is an evolution of our existing “personal device management” enrollment option that will better align Jamf Pro with Apple and provide an even more private experience for end users. User Enrollment draws distinct lines between personal and work data and apps. Your end users will love knowing that their personal texts, emails and app downloads are private and protected. On the other hand, your Jamf Pro administration team will enjoy management control over organizationally-owned data and apps.
User enrollment is a powerful evolution of the bring your own device (BYOD) story and is something we’re excited to continue developing moving forward.
Enrollment Customization
First impressions are critical. It’s common for a user to have their first zero-touch Mac deployment experience when they join a new organization. What better way to welcome someone onboard than to hand them a new-in-the-box Mac and explain that the only action required is to power on the device.
With enrollment customization in Jamf Pro 10.15, admins will now be able to build “PreStage Panes” to display custom text during enrollment. Welcome a new user to the organization or offer some suggested next steps; it’s up to you how to use the new custom text panels to add context or a personal touch to onboarding.
Single sign-on
Finally, we’re excited to roll out a new framework that will help Jamf Pro become an even more seamless part of your overall security plan and tech stack by integrating more deeply with existing identity providers.
With Jamf Pro 10.15, we’re able to bring a cutting-edge single sign-on (SSO) experience into the enrollment experience. By streamlining the number of times a user has to authenticate, we make it easier than ever for your organization to adopt modern security technology while still preserving the world-class Apple experience that end users crave.
We expect identity providers to ship compatible updates in the near future. When the updates ship, Jamf Pro will be ready to bring those identity providers into the enrollment experience, saving users time and extending the benefit of your existing cloud identity provider.
Next steps
In addition to the enhancements outlined above, Jamf Pro 10.15 also has a number of other product changes that will help make your organization more secure and your administration more effective at scale. View the release notes for a more detailed look at improvements like the new filesystem architecture that will better separate and secure editable user data from critical operating system data.
Craving more information? Read our Apple OS Upgrades Guide and see what’s changing with the new operating systems and learn tips on how to best manage OS upgrades to macOS Catalina, iOS 13, iPadOS and tvOS.
Conduct your Apple OS upgrades
Armed with the knowledge you need, you can choose when and how to upgrade your Apple devices. Download our simplified workflows to get started.
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