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Configuring Jamf Pro with Carousel Cloud

  • Updated

Carousel Cloud and Jamf Pro

Carousel is an enterprise digital signage CMS allowing users to create and manage content on their screens. Carousel pushes content to iPad and Apple TV media players to display this content. Carousel Cloud Player App must be installed on each iPad or Apple TV displaying content. This is where Jamf comes in! With Jamf you can easily install and configure the Carousel Cloud Player App on all of your Apple devices. 

Prerequisites

This documentation assumes you have Jamf Pro 10.35 or higher, an Apple Volume Purchasing Program (such as Apple Business Manager, or Apple School Manager) account and devices available in Automated MDM Enrollment.

  • Carousel Cloud Player is available for iPads running iOS 13 or later, as well as Apple TVs.

  • It is recommended your Apple TVs are running tvOS 13 or later. This makes future updates to tvOS easier.

  • If you use HTTPS to access Jamf Pro on-premise you'll need to have a trusted certificate installed (issued by a CA and not self-signed).

Configure PreStage Enrollment

The first step is to sign into your Jamf Pro instance. Navigate to Devices and then to PreStage Enrollments.

Create a new PreStage Enrollment. Set the PreStage Enrollment Display Name to Carousel. Then select the Mobile Device Names tab and set a naming method. Best practice is to use Serial Numbers with the prefix of Carousel Cloud.

Next, scope the new PreStage Enrollment to the Apple devices you would like to use as Players using the Scope tab to select available devices.

Smart Device Group

Click on Smart Device Groups under the Groups heading in the sidebar.  Set the Display Name to Carousel Smart Group. Go to the Criteria tab to add Enrollment Method: PreStage enrollment.  Set the Value to the name of the PreStage Enrollment and Save.

Purchase the App for Deployment

Carousel Cloud Player (iOS and tvOS) - For Carousel Cloud users

Open a new tab and open the appropriate App Store:

Best practice for purchasing is to acquire 110% coverage for your system.  If you are planning to have 50 Apple devices, purchase 55 licenses.

Configure Mobile Device App

Return to Jamf Pro and navigate to Mobile Device Apps.  After processing it will appear in the list of available apps.

General tab

Set a Display Name for the app or choose to leave the default.  Change the Distribution Method to Install Automatically/Prompt Users to Install.  Choose either Schedule Jamf Pro to automatically check iTunes for app updates or Automatically Force App Updates or leave them disabled to manually update when you choose.

Scope tab

Under Targets, click Add, then choose Mobile Device Groups and then click Add next to the Carousel Smart Group.

VPP tab

Enable the Assign VPP Content checkbox.

App Configuration tab

Carousel Cloud Player - For Carousel Cloud users

In the Carousel user interface, go to Configure -> Players -> Media Players, and select Setup New Player. Then, select AppleTV or iPad to find the configuration info:

Copy and paste the MDM Player Registration Information from Carousel into Jamf. It will look something like this:

<dict>

  <key>server</key>

  <string>https://<YourCarouselCloudURL>.carouselsignage.net</string>

  <key>udid</key>

  <string>$UDID</string>

  <key>key</key>

  <string>YourUniqueConfigurationString</string>

</dict>

Click Save

Create Configuration Profiles

Baseline Security

We recommend creating a baseline security configuration profile restricting AirPlay on the Apple TV along with any other restrictions you would like to apply.

We highly recommend any Apple TV being used for digital signage run in Single App Mode.  This will limit the screen to only showing Carousel, unless AirPlay overrides it.

Create a new Configuration Profile and name it, Carousel - Single App Mode.  While in the Options tab, scroll the sidebar down to find Single App Mode, select it and then press Configure in the main pane. Set the Targeted Operating System to tvOS. Fill in the Bundle ID with  com.trms.CarouselCloudPlayer for Carousel Cloud Player.

Complete the process by scoping the applicable Configuration Profiles to the Carousel Smart Group

A similar process above can be used to keep iPads showing Carousel content. Simply set the Targeted Operating System to iOS.

You can also choose to not scope this Configuration Profile to iPads and instead use it in a similar fashion to AirPlay Interrupt for Apple TVs, by having Carousel scope the Profile when an Alert is activated.

If you would like Carousel to interrupt AirPlay sessions when alert content is triggered you will need to create an additional configuration profile. This profile will turn off AirPlay so the Apple TV goes back into single app mode, showing only the Carousel Cloud Player App.

There is no need to scope this to any groups, as Carousel will do this automatically after the additional configurations below. 

Create Jamf User Service Account

Click into Settings in the upper-right corner, then on Jamf Pro User Accounts & Groups, then New.  Select Create Standard Account and set the Username to Carousel. Leave the new account set for Full Access and Custom respectively for Access Level and Privilege Set. In the Privileges tab, within the Jamf Pro Server Objects option enable the following:

  • Mobile Device Configuration Profiles

    • Read

    • Update

  • Mobile Devices

    • Read

  • Static Mobile Device Groups

    • Create

    • Read

    • Update

    • Delete

Then Save.

Authenticate Carousel with Jamf Pro

Login to your Carousel user interface and go to Configure -> System -> External Authentication.  Click on New and set the Type to Jamf Pro. Give the authentication a name and fill in the information about your Jamf Pro instance, using the service account we just created. Click Save.

Add Device Groups for Full Alerts in Carousel

First, in Jamf Pro, create a profile with the desired options (as described in the previous section “Create Configuration Profiles”) and add that profile to a new Static Device Group. It is important that you create a new Static Device Group for each zone you wish to trigger from Carousel. Since Carousel will manage which players are in that group, do not add any devices to the device group in Jamf Pro.

Next, you will edit each full alert zone and select the desired MDM device group under Alert Settings in order to apply profile settings to players during active full screen alerts. Log into Carousel and navigate to Configure, Zones, then select the edit icon to the desired full screen alert zone.

Under Alert Settings, select Force Monitor on When Alerts are Active. Then select the desired device group.

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