As a follow-up to my previous post on running Jamf Pro inventory updates at startup, several folks have asked if the approach I showed was better or more efficient than using a Jamf Pro policy to run the inventory update. I thought about it and I can’t say for certain if the LaunchDaemon-driven approach I described is better than using a Jamf Pro policy.

The advantage of the LaunchDaemon-driven approach has is that the Mac admin has control of the options being used. In my example solution’s case, I have jamf checkJSSConnection checking for up to 60 seconds before giving up. Depending on your network setup, it may take that long before your Mac can verify it can talk to the Jamf Pro server.

If you’re running an inventory update via a Jamf policy’s startup trigger, you’re using whatever configuration Jamf has chosen for making sure the policy is triggered when you want it to be. Jamf’s choices may be the right ones, but those choices are being made by Jamf and not the individual Mac admin.

That said, collecting and submitting inventory updates to Jamf Pro is a problem which can be solved multiple ways and what I presented in my previous blog post was a solution, but not the only solution. With that in mind, please see below the jump for details on how to solve the problem of collecting and submitting inventory updates at startup using a Jamf Pro policy.

You can set up a Jamf Pro policy with the following options to collecting and submit inventory updates to Jamf Pro when a Mac starts up:

1. Under the General policy options, set the following trigger and execution frequency:

• Trigger: Startup
• Execution Frequency: Ongoing

2. Under the Maintenance policy options, set the following option:

• Update Inventory: Check the box to select this option

All other options (scoping, category, user interaction, etc.) can be set according to the individual Mac admins’s preferences.