Apple Support Affinity Group

The Apple support Affinity Group (ASAG) is a voluntary body of information technology minded individuals that work together to focus on issues related to the support and usage of Apple technology at the University. We seek to create best practices that where possible are tied to workflow as opposed to checklists and seek a parity of support between devices that creates an operating system agnostic environment for our customers. In this aim we seek to leverage lateral support both within and outside of tufts, collect and distribute information from a central dissemination point while also playing close attention to our resource strengths and constraints (monetary, people, technology.)

As an unofficially chartered body, the ASAG is not a decision, policy, or in a position to control monetary funds to further our goals. In situations where we believe our recommendations should be tied to decisions or policy for support and escalation of Apple issues, we will enlist the support of the IT Leadership Forum which is a collection of IT Leadership and Management across the university and supported by the Office of the CIO.

Our goals may change over time, but in our first meeting we identified several critical gaps in Apple support at the University and feel we can devote discussion and some limited resources to advancing their causes:

• Application Support Verification (Specifically University applications) that are tied to macintosh support or integration. A particular pain point are web services that currently do not support being run in Apple supported browsers.
• Better understanding and streamlining the escalation route for macintosh tickets from User, to Support desk, to third tier support, to enterprise level AELP support.
• Macintosh computers represent a almost inherent requested requirement for dual boot or onboard virtual environment
• Lack of automated Management and Patching of macintosh systems
  • landesk proliferation
  • automated software deployment
• Mac Volume Licensing (8 at tisch, 20 at cssc)
• Gathering Information centrally on supported (individual) and supported (group) devices
• Proactive preparation for apple release schedule
• Centralizing experiences/information to OSX Supp/Mgmt Wiki
• Naming Conventions / AppleID implications in a university owned environment
• Mobile Device mgmt

In our first meeting the ASAG identified these priorities for focus. The first item is a task for the second meeting of ASAG for each support group:

• Gathering Information centrally on supported (individual) and supported (group) devices
• Mac Volume Licensing (8 at tisch, 20 at cssc)
• Centralizing experiences/information to OSX Supp/Mgmt Wiki
• Mobile Device mgmt