Backing up smart and static groups from Jamf Pro

When working with smart and static groups on Jamf Pro, especially more complex smart groups, I prefer to download then and back them up to GitHub or a similar internal source control tool. The reasons I do this are the following:

1. I have an off-server backup for the groups
2. I can track changes to the groups
3. If needed, I can make a change to a smart group and upload via the API instead of having to edit in the web console.

Up until recently, I didn’t have a good process for handling this but I was able to develop a way as part of working with an engineer from Jamf. After some work, I was able to build two scripts which do the following:

1. Use the Jamf Pro API to identify the Jamf Pro ID numbers of the smart and static groups.
2. Download each group as an XML file using its Jamf Pro ID number.
3. Format the downloaded XML.
4. Identify the display name of the group.
5. Identify if it was a smart or static group.
6. Save the downloaded XML as Group Name Here.xml to a specified download directory, based on whether it was a smart or static group.

For more details, please see below the jump.

I’ve written two scripts for this purpose:

• Jamf_Pro_Computer_Group_Download.sh – This script is designed to download and handle macOS smart and static groups
• Jamf_Pro_Mobile_Device_Group_Download.sh – This script is designed to download and handle iOS and tvOS smart and static groups.

For authentication, the scripts can accept hard-coded values in the script, manual input or values stored in a ~/Library/Preferences/com.github.jamfpro-info.plist file. The plist file can be created by running the following commands and substituting your own values where appropriate:

To store the Jamf Pro URL in the plist file:

defaults write com.github.jamfpro-info jamfpro_url https://jamf.pro.server.goes.here:port_number_goes_here

To store the account username in the plist file:

defaults write com.github.jamfpro-info jamfpro_user account_username_goes_here

To store the account password in the plist file:

defaults write com.github.jamfpro-info jamfpro_password account_password_goes_here

Both scripts run in similar ways, with the main difference being which kind of profiles are being downloaded.

To download macOS smart and static groups:

/path/to/Jamf_Pro_Computer_Group_Download.sh

To download iOS and tvOS smart and static groups:

/path/to/Jamf_Pro_Mobile_Device_Group_Download.sh

When run, you should see output similar to that shown below.

The groups themselves will be stored in either a user-specified directory or, if no directory is specified, a directory created by the script. They will be sorted by whether the individual group is a smart or static group.

The scripts are available below, and at the following addresses on GitHub:

https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/Casper_Scripts/Jamf_Pro_Computer_Group_Download

https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/tree/master/rtrouton_scripts/Casper_Scripts/Jamf_Pro_Mobile_Device_Group_Download

Jamf_Pro_Computer_Group_Download.sh:

Jamf_Pro_Mobile_Device_Group_Download.sh: