Adobe Admin Console Packages and AutoPkg

Standard

For several years I’ve been involved in methods to deal with Adobe Creative Cloud packages via AutoPkg.

Well, due to changes to the packages contents I’ve created yet another method (which is hopefully the last one).

Details on this method can be found below, as well as a history of the various methods employed over the years.

New method?

Say hello to: Adobe Admin Console Packages

The ReadMe is purposefully verbose, but the change was needed due to mostly:

  1. Since 2021, more and more of the Adobe Admin Console generated packages have had signed/encrypted payloads. Meaning that they cannot be parsed to check the payload as per normal packages are with AutoPkg.
  2. Numerous titles available via the Adobe Admin Console are not on an annual release cadence, so having a repo updated annually was making less sense.
  3. I wanted to create a very verbose processor that will allow folks to easily build their own recipes.

So, with the changes above the AdobeAdminConsolePackagesPkgInfoCreator processor, utilises the file: AdobeAutoPkgApplicationData.json to generate the needed metadata.

Hopefully, the file: AdobeAutoPkgApplicationData.json file can just be extended as needed and the AdobeAdminConsolePackagesPkgInfoCreator processor will keep working as needed.

If you are looking for .munki recipes, then the recipes in Adobe Admin Console Packages might be all you need.

Other than the installs array, these included recipes auto-populate the below items. With values from either the AdobeAutoPkgApplicationData.json and the PKG’s optionXML.xml and Application.json files

• blocking_applications
• description
• display_name
• installer_type
• minimum_os_version

If you don’t want the above to be set as mentioned, then you’ll need to create your own .munki recipes.

Similarly, if you need .jamf recipes etc you’ll need to create them.

For more details on how the above items are generated, and more details on the processors etc please see the ReadMe.

A Brief History

Creative Cloud Packager (CCP) was released around mid-2013, & three years later in 2016 Adobe published a KB on automating CCP using some specially crafted XML.

Soon after, both mosen & tvsutton started to experiment in leveraging this automation. This later became the adobe-ccp-recipes repo, of which I am happy to have contributed to.

Another three years passed, and in 2019 Adobe killed off CCP for the Adobe Admin Console.

So in 2019, at dataJAR we created Adobe CC 2019 recipes, these were based on the adobe-ccp-recipes but rejigged to deal with locally downloaded pkg’s.

In 2020, 2020 recipes were created and in 2021 (you guessed it), 2021 recipes were created.

There were two major differences between the 2019, 2020 and 2021 iterations actually came about in 2021 as the a number of the Adobe Admin Console generated packages have had signed/encrypted payloads. Meaning that they cannot be parsed to check the payload as per normal packages are with AutoPkg.

In 2021, the Adobe Substance 3D collection was added. This added another 4 titles that could be downloaded from the Adobe Admin Console that were not a part of the Adobe Creative Cloud annual release cadence (alongside Acrobat, Dimension, Premiere Rush and XD).

Adobe also added Apple Silicon support to Adobe 2021 mid 2021.

Towards the end of 2021, around the time of Adobe MAX 2021. Adobe released the 2022 iteration of the suite, and come February 2022 Adobe started to offer universal installers for titles via the Adobe Admin Console. Which included the 2021, 2022 and other non-annual titles.

So, a fair few changes since mid 2021 to March 2022.

Following the pattern of the Adobe CC 2019 recipes, Adobe 2020 recipes & Adobe 2021 recipes, I started to look at creating some 2022 recipes. But instead set upon the Adobe Admin Console Packages, in the hope that they are the can be extended as needed and not needing annual iterations.

Hope they help!

Creative Cloud Support Policy

In an aside the the above, Adobe announced their Creative Cloud Support Policy. Why is this important?

Well, there are now some releases which can receive: Long Term Supported Version (LTS).

These are only available to some Adobe subscriptions, but you’ll be notified of their release via the Adobe Creative Cloud Product emails I’ve blogged about prior.

So, if you don’t get the LTS releases due to your Adobe subscription what’s the option? Well, update the latest. For clarity this will mean moving from Adobe Photoshop 2021 to Adobe Photoshop 2022 asap.

As the LTS releases seem to be for the N-1 of a title, so Adobe Photoshop 2021.

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