Jamf Now is a great tool for small businesses and others who need a simple, straightforward
solution for managing their Apple devices.
However, before we get to enrolling devices and slinging apps left and right, we've got
a few pieces we need to put into place first.
This is the first video in a series that will cover how to setup Jamf Now, integrate with
Apple Business Manager, enroll devices, deploy apps, and apply Blueprints.
This is Nate with Jamf, welcome to Get Started with Jamf Now - First Steps.
If you haven't already signed up for a Jamf Now account, head to signup.jamfnow.com to
create an account.
Fill out your information and then a link will be sent to the email you signed up with.
Follow that link and you'll be able to sign in!
I already have an account created, so I'll go to login.jamfnow.com and enter my credentials.
Now that we're signed in, let's take a look around and get familiar with the interface.
The sidebar on the left is how we can navigate through the different areas of Jamf Now.
Up top is where we'll go for all of our management needs once things are set up.
This includes being able to see information for enrolled devices, deploying apps, and
applying blueprints.
Under that we have our section for Apple Services.
This includes APNs (which we'll come back to and get set up in a minute), Auto-Enrollment
for enrolling devices that come over from Apple Business Manager, and Volume Purchasing,
which is used for acquiring and deploying apps that we can send to the devices.
Under that we have Settings, which includes Open Enrollment - this is enrollment for devices
that aren't being assigned from Apple Business Manager - Teammates, which is where we can
add others to log in to Jamf Now, and finally More Settings, which contains a few extra
settings but nothing we need to worry about just now.
Down at the very bottom you can select your name in order to see your account settings,
such as switching your plan type and seeing billing information.
This is also where we can contact support or log out.
Now that we've been through the interface, let's go ahead and walk through setting up
APNs.
APNs, which stands for Apple Push Notification service, is required in order to use Jamf
Now.
It enables communication between Apple, the devices, and Jamf Now.
If you're interested in learning more about APNs, see the For review or further information
section.
Select APNs in the sidebar, and then select Connect to APNs to start the process.
First we need to download the Certificate Signing Request plist, which will go to your
default downloads folder.
Select next, and here we are prompted to open the Apple Push Certificates Portal.
Once open, sign in with your Apple ID.
It's strongly recommended that this is an Apple ID that is tied to the business, rather
than one particular individual.
This certificate will need to be renewed annually with this specific Apple ID, and if an individual
no longer works at the company or the Apple ID is forgotten, all communication with Apple
and Jamf Now will break.
This basically means re-doing all of the work that you've done to set up everything in Jamf
Now.
That's no good!
Select Create a Certificate in the top right and then read and agree to the terms and conditions.
Next, select Choose File and upload our plist.
Here, it may be a good idea to write a note in order to remember that this is for your
Jamf Now account, just in case.
Next, we need to download a .pem file in order to upload it in Jamf Now.
Return to Jamf Now, select next, and then choose to upload the .pem file.
The following screen asks you to save your Apple ID in order to remember which Apple
ID you signed up with.
Remember, you'll need to renew your APNs certificate by going through this workflow once per year,
and if you try to log in with a different Apple ID then you'll need to re-enroll all
of your devices, which could be a lot of work!
And that's all there is to it for creating our APNs certificate with Jamf Now.
You can always select the Jamf Now icon in the top left of the screen if you want to
return to your dashboard.
All of the navigation is on the sidebar on the left, and be sure to remember to renew
your APNs certificate once per year!
Be sure to check out our other videos on setting up Auto-Enrollment, Volume Purchasing, Open
Enrollment, and Blueprints with Jamf Now.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you soon!