This is an edited transcript of the 03.08.24 IT Hour
Overview
- Josh Roland, Product Manager, tells us about the brand new Private Repository available in JumpCloud.
- He outlines some of the caveats and current limitations and talks about what’s on the roadmap
- Becky Scott, Head of Community moderates the Q&A
Transcript
Josh: For those of you who haven't tried it, last week was our official general availability of the private repo. What it allows you to do is if you go into Software Management, on the left tab, for Windows and Apple you’ll see an option for Custom Application. Historically, for Windows you would only see Chocolatey or on the MacOS side you saw Custom Hosted or VPP.
We now offer up to 10 GB of space that JumpCloud hosts for each organization to upload and install any number of applications. There are a couple of key points to note here:
- For Windows we only support MSI applications
- For MacOS we only support PKGs
- We validate to make sure it’s got signed certificates. So if it doesn’t have a signed certificate it’ll get kicked back out.
- If it is signed we validate the hash and you’ll find that application in your private repository. You can then install that application on associated devices.
- The way we install the applications is through MDM channels so the device needs to be MDM enrolled
- Once you bind the applications what MDM does is it checks the device, if it doesn’t have the application then it installs, but if the application is already there, we’ll leave it alone.
- End users won’t see anything if the application is already installed.
- We don’t have a mechanism to update yet however we are looking to be able to. In order to update today you have to create a new application with the new version of the app and associate the devices to the new version.
We are also working on integrating the Microsoft Store. Once that’s released you can find applications from the Microsoft Store, pull the Package ID which is embedded in the URL, come back to JumpCloud and paste that Package ID. And then not only will we install it on associated devices but we’ll give you the option to keep it updated.
We are also working on keeping VPP apps updated. That’s a little way out in the future but it’s something we’re working toward.
We envision the private repo will be used for custom, internal applications only because once we integrate with app stores you’ll be able to deploy larger applications directly from the store.
Q&A
Q: Is DMG support planned?
A: Yes. Both DMGs and EXEs are on the roadmap. But you can reach out to us directly to bundle a PKG into a DMG. It requires a developer license to sign the package so it’s not straightforward but it’s something we can assist with.
Q: Will the new version update the previous one even if the app’s already installed?
A: Yes, if you select “Keep It Updated” and when we say ‘installed’ it has to be managed by MDM. Once the MDM takes over management of the device, it’ll update the existing version and you won’t end up with duplicates.
Q: Can you silently install .exe via commands?
A: Yes, you can
Q: Will the JumpCloud AutoPkg Importer tool be updated to work with the private repo? The AutoPackage Processor that points to a page on GitHub and it says it points to AWS. Just wondering if we could get it to point to the private repo.
A: That’s something we can look into.
Q: Any chance of being able to hide VPP apps in the console? It would be nice to hide outdated or single user apps by default.
A: We link to VPP apps if there’s available licenses. If there’s no licenses available they should be removed or not available within our platform.
Recommendation from the chat: To clean up older VPP apps, create a new site location in Apple Business Manager, then move the licenses over to that site location.
Q: Are Self Service Installs planned at some point?
A: Absolutely, that is on the roadmap but to be perfectly frank it’s probably on the tail end of our work on Application Management.
Q: We link Software Management to Device Groups for deployment. Currently any change to the device group, even if you simply change the name of it, it’ll initiate re-deployment of the apps. Will that be improved?
A: Yes, that is something that we’ve identified and are trying to manage.
Q: Will you be offering more space if we want to purchase extra space above the 10 GB?
A: That’s something we’ve thought about but have not productized yet.
Note: If you have any ideas for your use case please submit a feature request for our Product team to look at. If you’d like to chat with Josh you can look for Josh Roland in the JumpCloud Slack Lounge.
