Schedules: time-based policies for education

Photo by Julia M Cameron

If you caught this year’s Education State of the Union at JNUC, you may have seen the demo of time-based policies in our Jamf for K-12 offering. This new feature, named Schedules, gives schools more flexibility with their content filtering and restriction policies.

Schedules work with iOS and iPadOS devices with on-device content filtering (OCDF), and they work regardless of the network the device is connected to.

Configuration

Schedules allow for dynamic policy control, defining when specific content categories or custom rules will be blocked or allowed. Schedules can be recurring or one time, and can be active during only certain periods. For instance, you could have enforce restrictions on a device Monday - Friday from 7 AM to 3 PM — but this schedule doesn’t apply during winter break.

Here are some example use cases of Schedules:

At-home devices

Allowing students unlimited access to Netflix or YouTube during the school day can be distracting and detract from their learning. But what about in the evening, when the student takes their device home and is under their guardians’ care? With Schedules, these websites can be automatically blocked during the school day and allowed once school is over, whether this is a weekday, weekend or school holiday.

Relevant exceptions during school hours

Sometimes websites that are generally blocked can be useful for education — whether this is an educational game or graphic historical content that is ultimately informative when learning it in a supportive context. Schedules allow for this flexibility too. Admins can create allow lists for these websites during a specific class time so it doesn’t continue to be a diversion once it’s not relevant to the whole class.

Content and custom rules

Once a schedule is created, it can be:

• Assigned to content categories or specific websites
• Applied to different student or staff groups
• Added to existing rules

Schedules can override other configurations. For example, a custom rule can allow access to a website that would not typically be allowed.