Easily access resources and IT on Mac with Root3’s Support App

The following is a guest blog by Root3and written by Apple Business Consultant, Jordy Witteman, describing their new integration with Jamf. Get more information about this integration in the Marketplace.

Finding important diagnostic information about your Mac or accessing helpful resources shouldn’t be a challenge. But we often heard customers say this information was spread out across different or hard-to-find locations. So, we asked ourselves, wouldn’t it be great to offer an app that provided users and helpdesks easy access to these things, while being fully customizable, inspired by macOS Big Sur’s Control Centre, free to the community and looked great?

Thus, the Support App from Root3 was born. The Support App is a macOS menu bar app that gives users and IT relevant diagnostics at a glance and the ability to easily access often-used resources such as links or apps, while styling it with the corporate identity.

With the Support App users and administrators get:

● Mac diagnostic information such as the computer name, macOS version, password expiry, IP address, available updates, last reboot time and available storage

● Company resources such as links or apps, available with one click

● A great looking app combined with your brand elements

Did we mention it’s fully customizable? Thanks to Jamf Pro’s JSON Schema feature, IT admins can easily configure the Support App. Typically, when it comes to a custom Configuration Profile, there are a lot of options that must be configured, requiring knowledge of XML PLIST files, and mistakes are easy to make. That’s where Jamf Pro’s JSON Schema comes in: JSON custom schemas are a feature of Jamf Pro that allows admins to configure application properties with ease, using the Jamf Pro console.

These schemas leverage the readable and extremely popular JSON message format for setting application properties, instead of the XML PLISTs that are conventionally used by macOS, and combines it with the power MDM configuration profiles to ensure that the configured settings remain in place. The IT administrator only needs to copy and paste the available JSON file and upload it to the custom Configuration Profile payload.

The user interface transforms and offers all the possible configuration options in the Support App such as text fields and dropdown menus. Also included, as a description above every field, is the documentation, so you never have to leave Jamf Pro to learn how to configure the app!

The app was written using SwiftUI, Apple’s newest and multi-platform user interface framework and fully compatible with macOS Big Sur and Apple Silicon. It leverages SF Symbols to maintain the native look and feel of macOS, with a library of more than 2500 icons built into macOS. Security measures were taken to adopt Apple’s best practices with support for App Sandbox and Notarization. Also, a Jamf-friendly installer is available to easily deploy the app.

But this is just the start. The Support App will continue to improve and evolve as time goes on. We’re already looking into new SwiftUI features announced at WWDC21 to make it even better. Stay tuned!