Mojave Deployment and Configuration - using JAMF and DEPNotify

ICT-JPC
New Contributor III

Afternoon,

I am very new to the academic enterprise Mac world, along with JAMF, related products and scripting. Between various sources - JAMFNation, MacAdmins - Slack, Google, Github, YouTube and various online blogs my mind is blown!

I am part of a University that are wanting to:
Over the summer to update our existing Lab based Macs to Mojave
Improve/better utilise the existing DEP solution for new devices - Labs and Staff

We have a mixture of multiboot devices, single boot devices and will soon be obtaining a number of brand new Macs.

From everything I have looked at, read and watched, it would suggest the previous method of 'imaging', which has been used here previously without issue, is no longer an option. There is also the new T2 chip and security features Apple have brought in.

We have manually been able to create:
A working Mojave clean installation via Self Service, after manually converting the HFS drive to APFS. A copy of Mojave installer is download and run.
A policy that allows us to rename devices with manual input, so they comply with the existing naming convention
* A script that allows us to partition the drives for our multiboot option, that utilises APFS

We have a lot more to do around this and ideally it would need to be a lot more automated and this seems to be where DEPNotify comes in. I have read Neil Martins presentation on this, a video presentation on YouTube and obtained a copy of the script from Github, which in its unedited form has been added to JAMF and on a test run seems to indicate that it 'should' work, but we'd need to modify it to our requirements. This appears to be where we're stuck - understanding exactly how this script works and what components need to be changed. I'm not sure if there might be a 'for dummies' guide or similar :-) . Scripting for Mac is completely new to me personally and whilst my colleague has done quite a bit in the past, DEPNotify has us stumped!

Ideally, in my head at least, we need something along the lines of an Automated solution for our Labs that:
Coverts the existing file system to APFS
Cleanly installs Mojave
At logon prompts for a Device Name
JAMF or DEP does what it needs to do for us as a base setup
The device is moved into the relevant Site, which in turn sets itself as required based on that configuration
Any clean-up is completed and then reboots ready for the User to come along and use it

For our new devices:
At logon prompts for a Device Name
JAMF or DEP does what it needs to do for us as a base setup
The device is moved into the relevant Site, which in turn sets itself as required based on that configuration
Any clean-up is completed and then reboots ready for the User to come along and use it

Even working with someone with quite a bit of Mac/JAMF related experience, I think this has overwhelmed us and we're at a point where we need further assistance or input around creating a Mojave Upgrade using JAMF and DEPNotify and expanding our existing DEP, if anyone could possibly assist.

Thanks ahead of any help or advice that anyone might be able to provide.

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