Granting User Notifications

App Catalog can notify users about important update activity, for example when updates have finished, when required updates are still waiting to be installed, or when an update is about to be enforced.

macOS requires user consent when an application wants to show alerts or notifications in the macOS Notification Center. We recommend administrators to auto-approve notifications for the Catalog App using a Configuration Profile for optimal user transparency. Most Device Management Services provide the Notifications payload from the Apple MDM framework.

Below is an example of a few notifications:

Best practices

We recommend following a few best practices to make sure App Catalog behaves as designed. For certain use cases you may want to implement different settings, but in general it works best when you:

• Auto-approve notifications using MDM to avoid users needing to approve manually and potentially miss update activity.

• Configure notifications with the appropriate “Alert type“, temporary or persistent.

Since App Catalog 1.9.0, notifications are handled by two parts working together: Catalog Agent and Catalog Notifications.

• Catalog Agent: Completed app updates. These are usually non-critical and informative for the user. We recommend setting the “Alert type” for Catalog Agent to “Temporary“. Users will see an update completion notification and disappears automatically after a few seconds.

• Catalog Notifications: Pending required updates and enforcement warnings. These are more important, actionable and require the user’s attention. We recommend setting the “Alert type” for Catalog Notifications to “Persistent“. The notification will stay until the user dismisses or takes action.

For more information, please check User deferrals and interaction.

Technical details

When implementing the notifications settings, configure at least the following requirements.

• Catalog Agent:

  • AlertType: 1

  • BundleIdentifier: nl.root3.catalog.agent

• Catalog Notifications:

  • AlertType: 2

  • BundleIdentifier: nl.root3.catalog.notifications

Check out Apple’s documentation for all options:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/devicemanagement/notifications/notificationsettingsitem

Example

Below is an example Configuration Profile:

Create Configuration Profile

There are several ways to create a Configuration Profile for allowing or controlling notifications. Your MDM solution may support the payload to easily configure notifications in the user interface. If not, there are tools available that may help you creating a custom profile:

• Apple Configurator

• iMazing Profile Editor