Can I Force An App To Be Installed On A Managed Chromebook
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Hey all, fairly new to the management console and Chromebooks in general. I am in a library environment and setting up some Chromebooks to work off of a public session. The documentation on Google's site says " All hosted Chrome apps and some packaged apps and extensions are supported in public sessions"; however, I've tried to toy around with this by choosing a couple of extension s off of the Chrome web store and they never show up. I've seen some people claim that this only works with managed users, but the docs seem to indicate otherwise, and why would there be a spot for it in public sessions if it didn't work? I look forward to any suggestions on this.
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Still a little fragmented. Apps seem to push ok, extensions being pushed have been a joke. Have had to install extensions like Caffeine (no sleep/keep awake) on every single one individually.
I find that the easiest way to do it is to create an OU and move the Chromebooks around depending on the configuration. One thing is to restart the device and it should get the latest configuration. But it seems the OU configuration had to replicate to the particular server the Chromebook is taking to which seems to be random.
I find that the easiest way to do it is to create an OU and move the Chromebooks around depending on the configuration. One thing is to restart the device and it should get the latest configuration. But it seems the OU configuration had to replicate to the particular server the Chromebook is taking to which seems to be random.
I've had experience where it doesn't seem to be entirely consistent in some things, but in this case, all the other applied policies seem to be working. Since the documents indicate it will work, I wasn't sure what direction to go on it. I posted in some google forums but last I checked, hadn't gotten a response.
We do this here and it does work fairly good.
I appreciate your reply. I'm wondering if I am not understanding the structure though. I am using a Public Session, not a managed user, so I wouldn't think I would set up the extensions to be deployed in the User Settings, would I?
John,
Are you trying to install Chrome extensions or Kiosk apps? Generally extensions are limited to per-user and would probably require user management.
No. You would use a device setting. This is how we do testing. We set the OU to have a Kiosk mode and then we force open the testing apps.
Here is what I have:
You would manage the apps in the Kiosk Apps section. We auto launch the app and don't do a public session Kiosk. This setup bypasses the login screen and launches the Chromebook in that app. There is a way to bypass this auto-launch when turning the Chromebook on by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S and then you get a normal login screen and desktop. I have never tried to use the Public session Kiosk, but the settings when I flipped them looked the same.
Yeah in my case I'm trying to just do an extension. Here is my use case scenario: Force one, have some preinstalled extensions that may be of interest. But additionally, Computrace has a product for geofences, etc that installs as an extension.
The documentation makes it sound like force installed extensions should work under the public session, but so far it hasn't for me.
The extensions are a user setting. Is the extension you are trying to install in the web store?
The ones I was testing with, yes, are in the webstore. Ultimately, on the computrace one (which I don't have access to yet), you just put in the GUID is what I am told. Right now I'm just testing it as a proof of concept.Matt338 wrote:
The extensions are a user setting. Is the extension you are trying to install in the web store?
I think as long as you have the GUID and weblink, itshould load. A lot of times I find myself moving my Chromebook that I have into a OU to test various changes that I would do in production. We force install an extension for our staff to report suspected phishing schemes and it seems to work ok.
Our students were downloading proxy and VPN apps and extensions and we ended up blacklisting all apps and extensions and then whitelisting what we needed to use. I do it this way and usually it works without issue.
So you are saying entering the GUID works but not actually searching for the extension in the Chrome Web store? Because to test, I've just tried to install a few random extensions and they never show up.Matt338 wrote:
I think as long as you have the GUID and weblink, itshould load. A lot of times I find myself moving my Chromebook that I have into a OU to test various changes that I would do in production. We force install an extension for our staff to report suspected phishing schemes and it seems to work ok.
Our students were downloading proxy and VPN apps and extensions and we ended up blacklisting all apps and extensions and then whitelisting what we needed to use. I do it this way and usually it works without issue.
So are you still saying this would be done as a device setting and not a user setting or public session setting?
It's a combination of settings. You would need to have your device in an OU that you want to do public settings and then change your settings in the OU for both the User and Device to get the desired effect that you are wanting. We have to do that with our Chromebooks here, but I find that slowly and methodically going through the settings and making changes until you get what you want the best way to figure out what effect a change in your settings are going to do to the User, Device, or both.
For example, I made a change today for my testing OU to tweak a network setting. I made the changes on my access points and then went into the Admin Console and made a mandatory wireless setting for that OU to switch the computers to that wireless network. When it synced, I forgot that I had a demo AP from another vendor that didn't have that SSID and the seven kids that were testing right under the AP lost connection because the SSID didn't exist. OU changes are usually instant and some changes will log out a user or reboot the Chromebook, but most will not log out a session.
Alright. Looks like I will just have to play with it. It doesn't seem very straight forward or well-documented, does it? Kind of surprising that Chromebooks are so popular given that you just have to poke around until you get the right settings!
It can be a crapshoot sometimes. The public session and kiosk modes can be picky and I found that some apps don't play well in kiosk mode. Public mode may be different, but I don't use that mode.
Do yourself a favor. Go to a Google Sheet and use the Chromebook Inventory Add-on. It will make everything easier for you moving them around, etc.
So from what I am seeing from this bug report, it doesn't look like I can force install apps under a public session. Very disappointing honestly. To me, using public session mode is the easiest way to go in using these devices, but preventing force installed apps makes it less useful.
Public session is a guest mode, it doesn't have any credentials/login to tie the session info and is designed to be as light weight as possible to NOT require tons of data push/pull each time the session is launched.
For what you are trying to do you would be better off setting up a generic USER account with a basic password and restrict the devices to ONLY allow that account to login then you can force the extensions/shortcuts etc.
This sounds ideal, the problem I found is that if I do this, and then you go to gmail, for example, it assumes you are going to gmail for that user (which doesn't exist), so it won't let the person logged in with that username log into gmail with alternate credentials, which isn't particularly helpful, since I want people to be able to do that.Cweb wrote:
Public session is a guest mode, it doesn't have any credentials/login to tie the session info and is designed to be as light weight as possible to NOT require tons of data push/pull each time the session is launched.
For what you are trying to do you would be better off setting up a generic USER account with a basic password and restrict the devices to ONLY allow that account to login then you can force the extensions/shortcuts etc.
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Can I Force An App To Be Installed On A Managed Chromebook
Source: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1982299-force-installing-chromebook-extensions
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