Fleetsmith

Apple Device Management

Universal Settings

Limited apps for iOS devices

Ease of use to manage. Some other solutions can be a little hard to navigate. Fleetsmith is intuitive.

DEP Enrollment is really nice. If you are shipping a laptop out to the user you can set their password and when they turn on their computer they will have access.

Adding software to be pushed out. Pretty easy to do.

The list of native software to be deployed isn't as large as it could be.

Pushing out custom software would be a good workaround but that doesn't seem doable.

Clients frequently tell me they dislike the reporting capabilities.

Security.

Asset control.

Deployment.

User management.

User interface.

Onboarding new users is an easy process.

Taking action if a device is lost is simple to do.

Windows support would be nice to have.

Policy enforcement

Enrollment of new workstations

Patch management

Eagerly waiting for custom packages, though the support for scripts and toolings like Chef and Puppet is strong.

VPN Configuration

Easy Setup

We were told that this was in the works and it would be implemented at the beginning of the year 2019. That has still not happened and whenever we ask about this functionality we cannot get a good answer.

Management of devices that are already in the field—we were told that in order to use Fleetsmith as we would like (pushing apps to devices) we would have to get each device and set them up from a Mac.

Integration with Windows.

Making sure security settings are enforced.

Deploying software.

Keeping track of users.

Would be nice to be able to import 3rd party software.

Great user interface.

Simple implementation and rollout.

The catalog contains a lot of the most used services.

Customer service needs a chat or phone support.

The catalog is nice but doesn't contain everything.

Custom scripts should have a better user interface.

Remote Device Management

Inventory

Would love to see more applications to implement and control (i.e. Github, Trello, JIRA, Teamweek, GSuite)

We signed up under a pretense that Sophos would soon be available as an app. That has not happened and I do not believe there are any antivirus apps available.

The help center is lacking. As someone who is not in IT but is responsible for the IT of our small company, I find myself reaching out to someone at Fleetsmith at least twice a month. I would love a better education center to debrief all the capabilities of the product.

Fleetsmith was really easy to get started with - It had a much lower barrier to entry than other tools we tried.

Nothing springs to mind!

Intuitive user interface.

Support for modern workstation configurations.

Light on resources.

Reports for compliance documentation that could be provided to auditors.

Centralized visibility.

Automated remediation.

Device analytics.

Onboarding.

Deeper analytics.

Centralized IT catalog of all devices.

User onboarding explanation.

Single pane of glass for managing Apple devices.

Makes updates on devices much easier.

One place to check everything!

Takes some work to set up, but that's Apple's fault for having such tight security. But after you're over the hump, it couldn't be easier to use!

Manages leased laptops.

Keeps software up to date.

Let’s me see who has which device.

Tracking devices.

Advanced asset management.

Apple lease details.

Escrow of FileVault keys

Managing of common 3rd party software apps (Office, Zoom, 1Password)

Hardware reporting - battery, storage use, etc.

Zero-touch deployment of newly purchased machines

Handling of updates and/or communication about undeployed updates on Macs with limited storage space

I hope they're working on a way to do automatic macOS user account creation as part of a hardware 'refresh' when reassigning a unit from one staff member to another.

Easier/more customization options for deploying in-house and other custom softwares

Pushing latest app updates.

Monitoring devices' health in the organization.

Remote wipe and lock features.

Fleetsmith support is responsive.

Granular control on the security features such as firewalls, as currently it only enables or disables a firewall. [Would be great] If it can be enabled but also allow certain control on which apps are added as an exception.

In the dashboard, affected devices that were highlighted cannot be viewed in a list. Right now in order to know which devices are affected, we can only click on a draft email to send the email to the affected device owner.

Fleetsmith [should] work with device manufacturer (Apple) to make the solution works better. Current issue with T2 chip is still plaguing us.

Ease of use

Modern UI

Reliable

UI is sleek and modern but sometimes a little too minimal depending on the size of your viewport

Setting up zero-touch deployments with Apple DEP.

Seamless integration with G Suite.

Auto account creation for users.

Filevault2 key escrow.

Managed apps and profiles are extremely simple to use.

As an Admin I would like to know what updates are in flight (like a progress bar) to which devices.

More tooling to streamline the laptop repurposing workflow not just for new devices (e.g. doing the auto account creation for a user's device).

I wish I could add notes to pending devices e.g. this device is a spare in the Boston office. I do this with sticky notes on my desk.

Streamlined set up.

Device setup & management.

Policy deployment.

Needs more automation in apps.

Fleetsmith does a great job of being unobtrusive on managed devices. After initial deployment, one might never know it’s there except when it prompts to enforce a software update.

Fleetsmith has sensible defaults and relatively few decisions for the administrator to make; for most applications and configurations, it’s sufficient to enforce a minimum version. For more complex use cases, I suggest falling back on Fleetsmith’s ability to install tools such as Puppet and run arbitrary shell commands.

I’ve seen Fleetsmith be unable to achieve its desired configuration, but not communicate the problem clearly. For example, when I first enforced FileVault encryption via Fleetsmith, the device showed FileVault encryption as “Enabled, but not enforced”. After talking with Fleetsmith technical support, I found that the underlying issue was that Fleetsmith had not been able to escrow the encryption key because encryption had been manually applied before Fleetsmith was installed; technical support staff suggested that I resolve this situation by manually disabling encryption and then allowing Fleetsmith to reenable it. This solution was acceptable for me, a relatively technical user, but would have been a nonstarter for a nontechnical user.

It’s difficult for me to determine what exactly the Fleetsmith agent is doing on a managed device. When I enforce a change via Fleetsmith and then notice that the change has not been made on the device, it’s difficult for me to tell whether a) the agent tried to make the change but was unable or b) the agent hasn’t yet tried to make the change.

Very simple to roll out.

Customer service is fast and top notch.

Takes customer recommendations on features seriously.

Simplicity of the interface means some feature options aren't as clearly defined as they could be.

User profiles vs device profiles can be confusing.

No "master view" of profile setups.

Can't duplicate a profile or set of applications (yet).