Self Service+: empowering productivity and security through a unified app experience
Truly delighting end users with genuinely helpful apps tailored to their needs is the focus of Sam Allcock, Director of Product Management and Kyle Hammond, Principal Software Engineer at Jamf at JNUC 2024.
In their presentation, titled Self Service+: Empowering Productivity and Security Through a Unified App experience, Sam and Kyle discussed why businesses should care about user experience and how prioritizing end-user satisfaction in purchasing decisions is likely to yield a higher return on their investment.
Kyle explained how new generations of users expect more from their technology, a trend in part driven by growing up in the era of Apple devices:
“I'm sure many of you have experienced this, but it's really difficult to roll out an unpopular tool. We want to make adoption easier for your end users, so that you get the value you expected quicker.”
On the other hand, bad tools can greatly impact productivity not only for users, but for IT admins, who on average assist 200 users each.
Introducing Self Service+
To support organizations in providing the best possible user experience, Jamf teams have been hard at work creating Self Service+, a new app that allows end users to quickly become productive, establishing trust while having a secure personalized experience. It brings together the power of Self Service classic and Jamf Protect for macOS in a single end-user app to create a more security-aware workforce. End users are an attractive attack vector, so it is important that they understand their role in keeping the organization secure.
Self Service+ is the new home for everything Jamf. A new home page has been created to contain information curated by IT admins and accessible to users, including an overview of the security posture with data pulled directly from the macOS protect agent.
To create trust and familiarity among employees, Self Service+ has many customization and branding options. Internal and external icons and text fields can be updated, and a banner display area allows for notices and internal communications. Other interface aspects were also carefully considered, with tweaks to categorization and changes to the collapse menu, as well as improved and consistent messaging on notifications. Going further, the team is excited to be working on more intuitive notification and enforcement methods for software updates as part of Declarative Device Management.
Collaboration through code
Our current crop of Jamf apps includes Self Service, Jamf Connect, Jamf Protect and Jamf Trust, all of which came from different acquisitions over the years. To increase collaboration and alignment, our app development teams are now working towards a new strategy that takes into consideration each app’s workflow but shares more of the foundation code.
By splitting existing code into modules, it became easier to move it across teams. Individual teams can continue to work on their own apps, while a new team is now responsible for the shell that holds it together. A new UI library guarantees a consistent look and feel. This new strategy helps foster collaboration between engineers at Jamf and ensures that Self Service+ will continue to evolve.
What is next for Self Service+
As of early October, Self Service+ has entered a private beta, with plans for shipping early 2025 to all Jamf Pro and Jamf Protect customers. But the roadmap to reimagining user experience will not end there. Other apps, starting with Jamf Connect and Jamf Trust are expected to be included in Self Service+ to fully realize a trusted access outcome for macOS.
Self Service+ will also come to iOS and iPadOS, as well as other mobile platforms that Jamf supports in the security space, such as Windows and Android. The goal is to have the same exact experience across all platforms so that organizations with mixed device fleets can also get the benefits of the single app for end users.