Adding Keychain Menu to the Mac Menu Bar with Profile Manager

Now that support has all but been dropped for MCX and Workgroup Manager, it is time to start pushing out our settings and customizations with Profile Manager.  I will be making a series of posts on using Profile Manager to apply settings to the menu bar in OS X.

I am using user groups with nested AD users to apply the settings, your environment may be different.

• Login to Profile Manager
• Click on Groups and select the group you want to apply settings to.
• Clic Settings
• Scroll all the way to the bottom and click on Custom Settings.
• In the preference domain type com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
• Under Property list values, type the following in the key field:  /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app/Contents/Resources/Keychain.menu
• Select String for the type.
• Click OK.
• Be sure to click Save to apply the settings.

The clients should have the Keychain menu icon the next time they login.

Add Users to VPP in Meraki

When using Meraki Systems Manager, free apps will push out just fine without being assigned a license.  The users will simply be prompted for their Apple ID and password.  To use managed distribution and deploy paid apps the users have to be invited to VPP.

To invite users to participate in VPP:

1.  Login to Meraki Systems Manager

2.  Go to MDM > VPP

3.  Click the User Management tab

4.  Click +Add User

5.  Enter the name and email of the user.

6.  Check Send invitations automatically and click Save

From the user's iOS device:

1.  Access the user's email account.

2.  Open the invitation email from Meraki.

3.  Click the invitation link.

4.  After being redirected to the App Store, agree to the terms and conditions.

5.  Click Ok after the VPP assignment has been confirmed.

Now app licenses should be able to be assigned to individual users for paid apps.

Add a Web Clip Profile to Meraki Systems Manager

Use these steps if you want to create a new profile with the web clip(s).

Go to MDM > Profiles

Click +Add New > New mobile profile.

Set the scope to assign this to the following devices.

Click Save Settings.

Click Edit Profile Settings

Click Web Clips

Click Create a Web Clip



Fill in the Label field.  This is the text that will be displayed under the icon for the web clip.

Click Save Changes.

The devices should add the Web Clip to the home screen the next time they check in.

VPP Licenses Not Showing Up in Meraki Systems Manager

After purchasing app license from the Apple Education Volume Purchase Program website the licenses should be available via the Systems Manager dashboard under MDM > VPP.  It may take some time for the transaction to be processed after making the purchase.  The license will not be available to Meraki until the transaction has completely processed.

The following steps can be used to force Meraki SM to sync the licenses with Apple VPP.

• Go to MDM > Meraki
• Click the Force sync now button on the upper right side of the window.

Once completed, the licenses that have been processed by VPP should now be available.  This process can take some time if you have several thousand licenses to sync.  I have seen it take over 30 minutes to complete with larger installations.

Recover Data from JVC Everio GZ-MG330HU

Recently I had a client bring me a JVC Everio GZ-MG330HU camcorder that had come in contact with water.  After which it would power on, but display a message that the temperature was too low.  This prevented it from connecting to a computer to download the data since it would power off shortly after the error.

The JVC Everio GZ-MG330HU is a hybrid HDD/micro SD hybrid camera with a built-in 30GB hard drive.

Since this was the first time I had had to recover data from one of these models, I started to take it apart to see what type of hard drive the device was using.  This model had a 1.8-inch Toshiba hard disk drive.  In the past I had managed a fleet of Dell Latitude XT tablets.  The Latitude XT also had a 1.8-inch drive.

To start the recovery process I removed the hard drive from the XT and removed the zif cable.  I then attached the zig cable to the camcorder's hard drive and plugged it into the XT.  Since the drive doesn't have a usable OS, I decided to use Linux Mint on a USB flash drive to recover the data.  After booting into Mint, I was able to see the drive and files immediately.  I attached another external USB drive and was able to recover over 21 GB of data that had been stored on the drive.

There are other types of adapters that could be used, but I happened to have one of these on the shelf, saving me the time and money of ordering an adapter.

Silently Install iOS Apps with Meraki to an iPad Cart

A bit of background for this post.  I work for a quickly growing school district on a team that manages around 4000 Macs, iPads and Chromebook.  We have approximately 1200 iPads that are in carts for each grade level to use.  We needed a method to silently push the apps to each of the carts.  The method we chose was to create a different Apple ID for each cart at each school and use Apple's VPP Managed Distribution.

NOTE:  You will need to invite the user accounts via VPP before proceeding.  Follow my previous post here for instructions.

1. Purchase the paid or free apps via the Apple VPP website.
2. Go to meraki.com and login to your Systems Manager dashboard.
3. Go to MDM > VPP
4. Click the Licensed Applications tab if it isn’t already selected.
5. Check the name of the app you want to assign to an Apple ID.

NOTE:  If the app you are looking to assign is listed, but has been purchased from the Apple VPP website, you may need to sync the Apple API.  Click the Force sync now button in the upper right of the window.

1. Check the box next to the user(s) (Apple IDs) you want to assign the app to.
2. Click Grant license to user(s)

Now that the license has been granted, we need to assign the app to the devices.

1. Go to MDM > Apps
2. Click + Add new > iOS App
3. Search for the app.
4. Click Add next to the app to be assigned.
5. Set the scope to select which devices should receive the app.
6. Click Save

OPTIONAL:  We usually check the box next to Remove with MDM.  This way if a user removes the management profile, the apps will also be removed.

Troubleshoot Supervised iPads Prompting for Apple ID Password

After configuring our iPad carts and successfully deploying apps silently using Meraki Systems Manager, we were surprised when they suddenly started prompting for an Apple ID password.  After a few days of troubleshooting and a call to our Apple Engineer, we discovered that when certain restrictions are applied to a device running iOS 7, the device will prompt for a password when assigning apps.  We had applied the profiles after deploying some apps, which explains why we didn't have this problem immediately.

So far, we have tested and found that restrictions to the store(s), content/age restrictions, and requiring a password when installing apps will cause this behavior.

Hopefully, this will save others when troubleshooting silently pushing apps to iOS devices.

Add Apple VPP Accounts to Meraki Systems Manager

1. Login to Meraki Systems Manager
2. Go to MDM > VPP
3. Click on User Management
4. Click +Add User
5. Enter the name and the email for the account you want to add.
6. Go to the iPad you want to use this account with.  Add the email account and sign into the App Store.  You should receive an email invitation from Meraki inviting you to participate in the VPP program.
7. Click the link and accept the prompts when the App Store opens.
8. When the App Store confirms the assignment was successful you are now ready to assign apps to this Apple ID.
9. Go back to Meraki MDM > VPP > User Management and the account should now show Associated.  If not you may have to click Force sync now.

IMPORTANT:  If this is a cart of iPads you can share the same account on each iPad the cart.  Be sure to only accept one VPP invitation on a single iPad.  If you accept invitations for two different accounts on a single iPad an error will be presented in the User Management section of Systems Manager.

Problems Updating IBM POS to Windows 7

Upon finding out that we can now install our own Food Service Point of Sale software we decided to update some of our old IBM POS 4846-545 from Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 to Windows 7.  We wanted to finish this sooner than later due to the end of Windows XP support as well as XP becoming a bit sluggish on this hardware.  An easy enough task, however, the Windows 7 installer would hang after the Windows 7 splash screen.

Knowing that these systems were outdated by a couple of years when we purchased them, I assumed there was likely a BIOS update available from IBM to fix the problem.  Sure enough, I found a BIOS update (version X6KT190) that had been released on 1-5-2011.  Our POS systems were still running X6KT170 which had been released in 2008.

Thankfully, there is an executable version of the BIOS update that can be started from within Windows, saving the need to dig out the old USB floppy drive.

After updating the BIOS, the Windows 7 Setup screen was displayed and we were able to install Windows 7 without any problem.  All of the drivers also had Windows 7 support.

IBM POS 4846-545 BIOS

Restore Windows RT on an Asus VivoTab RT

We are currently piloting 30 ASUS VivoTab RT tablets.  The pilot was going pretty well, except for a couple devices displaying an error at startup, "Your PC needs to be repaired."

To repair the system we created a USB recovery drive from one of our working systems.

To perform the recovery:

1. Connect the recovery drive to the VivoTab RT.
2. While holding down the volume down button, press the power button.  Release both after the Asus logo appears.
3. The recovery will then load.
4. Select the US keyboard layout.
5. Touch Troubleshoot

Reset your PC

1. Tap Skip this Drive
2. Tap Windows RT 8.
3. A screen titled Reset your PC appears warning that all personal files and apps will be removed and all PC settings will be changed to their defaults.  Since there are no files that we need to backup click Next.  NOTE:  This will destroy all of the data on the device.  Be sure there is nothing on the device that you want before clicking Next.
4. Touch Yes, repartition the drives.
5. Touch Just remove my files.
6. Touch Reset.

A black screen with the ASUS logo should be displayed with Resetting your PC and the status.

After the restore is complete Windows RT will prompt for region, language and other settings as usual.