Category Archives: Apple Devices

Apple macOS device enrollment

Apple macOS device enrollment

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All iSchool-purchased Apple devices (faculty, staff, computer-classroom computers, iPads, Apple TVs) are “enrolled” in The iSchool’s Apple Mobile Device Management (MDM) tool, “Jamf Pro”. It is possible, infrequently, that you may be prompted to renew or update your device’s enrollment. Follow the steps below.

1) Click the “Device Enrollment” notification if it appears.

2) An “Update Device Enrollment” message in System Preferences -> Profiles should open. Click “Update.”

3) Enter your UW NetID credentials, click “Connect”.

4) After a few seconds you should see wording about the device being “…supervised and managed by University Of Washington.” This is expected and the desired result. You may quit out of System Preferences.

Set up iSchool issued macOS computer

Set up iSchool issued macOS computer

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The following steps need to be done to set up an iSchool-issued macOS computer. Please contact the iSchool IT Help Desk, 206-616-3086 or ihelp@uw.edu, if there are any questions or issues during this setup process.

This process could take around 30-45 minutes or more to complete.

(The following screenshots are a reference based on the time of writing. The actual screens and options you see and click through are subject to change at any time per Apple macOS updates.)

1) Plug in the power adapter if the computer is a laptop. Turn on the computer.

2) Select language, click the forward-arrow.

3) Select your country or region, click Continue.

4) Select and adjust any or all accessibility features or click Not Now to set up later.

5) Connect to any available Internet network.

6) Click Continue at the University of Washington Remote Management screen.

7) Authenticate with your UWNetID@uw.edu credentials.

8) The “Full name:” and “Account name:” will be filled-in with your UW NetID information. Enter your UW NetID password twice, edit the icon to your liking, click Continue.

9) If you and the computer are on the University of Washington campus, skip to step 11. Open a Finder window, go to the Applications folder, start the “F5Access” application. (The “F5Access” application should appear within a few minutes if it is not already in the Applications folder).

10) Click “F5 Access” in the top-right menu bar, click “UW Husky OnNet VPN”, authenticate using UW NetID credentials in the University of Washington WebLogon screen. (This action is connecting you to the UW network via Virtual Private Network (VPN) to make the next few steps possible).

11) Enter your UW NetID credentials in the “Sign into NETID.WASHINGTON.EDU…” box, click Sign in.

12) In the “Password Synchronization” box enter your UW NetID password in both fields, click Sync Password. Note the “Passwords in sync” message. Click OK. You will be using your UW NetID credentials for the username/password combination for your macOS device.

13) Open a Finder window, go to the Applications folder, start the Self Service application, sign in with UW NetID credentials if prompted.

14) Look for the item named “Install standard Faculty, Staff, PhD applications.” Click any install window that appears.

Note well: The total installation time could take ~30 minutes or more depending on your network connection. “Self Service” will give you the messages “Executing” and “Installing” and “Running” while installation is happening. “Done!” will appear briefly when installation is complete. If you do not see any glaring “failure” messages, the installation happened correctly. The Applications folder will be populated with the software titles mentioned in Self Service. There are other miscellaneous applications and printers you may install if you wish before exiting the Self Service application.

15) Install the Code42/CrashPlan file backup software by following the steps on this web page: Install the CrashPlan file backup software.

Use the Code42/CrashPlan software to restore files from a previous computer if necessary. Detailed directions are on this web page: How to restore files using the Code42/CrashPlan application.

Restoring files via Code42/CrashPlan is not necessarily a trivial step. Please contact the iSchool IT Help Desk if there are any questions about restoring files via Code42/CrashPlan.

16) Restart the computer. After the first time the computer is restarted, you will be met with the setup of “FileVault” disk encryption.

When you see the “…enable FileVault” message click Enable Now, click OK.

At this point, your iSchool macOS computer has completed the necessary one-time-setup-steps and is ready to use but may not have all of the customizations you need. Some examples of further actions you may need to take:

If Microsoft Outlook is your email application of choice, find and start the Microsoft Outlook application. Follow the instructions provided by Outlook to add your @uw.edu email address.

If you have access to a shared @uw.edu email account and need to add the account to Outlook: https://www.kb.ischool.uw.edu/how-to-add-shared-netid-email-account-to-outlook/.

If you need to install Zoom: https://zoom.us/download.

If you need to install SecureCRT (to access The UW Student Data Base): https://itconnect.uw.edu/uware/securecrt/.

You may need or want to sign in to your web browser of choice to sync bookmarks:

Google Chrome sync directions

Firefox sync directions

Microsoft Edge sync directions

Please contact the iSchool IT Help Desk, 206-616-3086 or ihelp@uw.edu, if there are any questions or issues during this setup process.

All about iSchool backup (what, who, when, where, how, why)

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The goal of backups performed by iSchool IT is to allow you to recover from a hardware disaster or transfer to a different computer easily and not to provide archival backups. We currently only backup iSchool-issued computers.

HOW

Files are backed up using an application named Code42/CrashPlan.

WHAT

All the default Windows and macOS user folders are backed up. This means:

on Windows, every file and folder under:

C:\Users\your UW NetID

and on Mac, every file and folder under:

/Users/your UW NetID

is getting backed up.

Sidenote – Although Code42/CrashPlan does backup Firefox and Chrome bookmarks modern web browsers provide a way to backup/synchronize bookmarks across different devices/computers . If you use Firefox or Chrome, we recommend you sign into the browser itself, using your UW email address and use the browser’s built-in sync feature to save all your bookmarks to the cloud:

set up Firefox sync
set up Chrome sync

WHO

All permanent iSchool faculty, staff, and PhD students that have been issued an iSchool computer will have said computer backed up via Code42/CrashPlan.

It is standard operating procedure to backup one computer per person.

If you are not a permanent employee and/or you are using a checkout or loaner computer your machine will not be backed up via Code42/CrashPlan. Please take appropriate actions to safeguard your data.

WHEN

The Code42/CrashPlan application will check for changes and make backups every fifteen (15) minutes.

For the Code42/CrashPlan application to work, your computer needs to be:

a) powered on (not in Sleep Mode)
b) connected to the Internet

WHERE

The Code42/CrashPlan application works whether your computer is on or off campus.

All files are copied/uploaded to a server accessible only by the iSchool IT team.

All files are stored on disk and none are copied to tape.

WHY

The goal of backups performed by iSchool IT via the Code42/CrashPlan application is to allow you to recover from a hardware disaster or transfer to a different computer easily.

Code42/CrashPlan does support some file versioning history by default.

RESTORE / RECOVER FILES

Basic instructions for recovering files from Code42/CrashPlan can be found here. Contact the iSchool IT Help Desk with questions.

UW-IT DOCUMENTATION

UW-IT Code42/CrashPlan documentation

Deep Freeze/Administrative rights on lab computers security model

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In order to give students at the iSchool the greatest possible flexibility in achieving their academic work, everyone who uses an iSchool lab computer is automatically logged in to that computer as a local administrator. This allows the user to have full permission to install software and to make any number of configuration changes to the computer’s operating system.

While The iSchool believes in providing an open learning environment, it also wants to give its lab users secure, reliable machines. For this reason, it has chosen to run Deep Freeze on all lab machines.

Deep Freeze is a program that restores a computer to a “fresh state” after each system reboot. Consequently, if you install a program on an iSchool lab machine and then reboot the machine, the program will no longer be installed when the machine restarts. Deep Freeze returns the computer to its original pristine state, so if you ever experience any problems with a lab computer they can be fixed by rebooting.

Using Deep Freeze ensures that our machines stay up and running with the least amount of interruptions due to accidental configuration changes, software bugs, spyware, malware, and viruses.