[Casper] Dealing with laptops that are on/off the network

[Smith, William]

From: "Nesbitt, Sean M." <sean.m.nesbitt at lmco.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:07:46 -0500
To: <casper at list.jamfsoftware.com>
Subject: [Casper] Dealing with laptops that are on/off the network

> I have some users who have company laptops, however, they do not use them as
> their primary computer. In fact, these company laptops are only sporadically
> on the company network. As a result, the laptops are significantly behind in
> updates once they access the company network.
> 
> I would like to set either a procedure or policy that would catch these
> laptops once they initially logon to the network, yet, I have been unable to
> find an acceptable solution. I am wondering if other users have this situation
> and how they have dealt with it.

You might want to set up a task/policy combination to have your machines
phone home on a regular basis. I have mine set for every 30 minutes but we
have less than 300 Macs here. I usually just monitor a Smart Group page for
machines that haven¹t been on the network for X number of days and contact
those individuals to set up time for updates.

You may also be able to create an Ongoing locally cached policy with a
script that will display a message to the user after X number of days that
he needs to contact you for updates. Display it once per day at first. Then
maybe four times a day after a another week has gone by.

If these machines are not owned by a specific user you then consider a
check-out system and keep the laptops yourself until needed.
 
-- 

bill

William M. Smith, Technical Analyst
MCS IT
Merrill Communications, LLC
(651) 632-1492