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Bulk Update the Enrollment User (auth_username) using API

What

This problem and solution came from a customer who had many devices in FileWave, yet did not have the 'Enrollment User' (internally known as auth_username) populated. In order for automatic associations of iPads with Apple Classroom, devices must have an enrolment user set. While it’s possible to set these one by one, that does not scale well. Even hosted customers could benefit from this example.

When/Why

The below solution leverages the FileWave API and is a great example that any customer could build. You can run this script from your mac, Windows, or Linux computer, and it will talk to the API and make the changes in bulk.

This example happens to be a Python script.  As such, if ran on the FileWave Server, Python will already be installed.  However, for hosted customers, the script will not be ran on the server and it should be necessary to have Python installed on the device running this script

https://www.python.org/downloads/

https://docs.python.org/3/using/windows.html

How

  • The first step is to download the script:

    FileWave Download.png

  • Once downloaded, the zip contains two files: bulk_change_device_authname.py and auth_username.csv

  • If the script is not being ran directly on the server, it may be necessary to alter the first line of code, to specify the location of Python on the device running the script.  For example, on macOS, that may be:  #/usr/local/bin/python3 

  • The CSV file should be edited to include the desired list of Devices with Users.  The supplied template looks like:

Device ID,Enrollment Username
67d6f4bfcf27fa62bb9815365c67ebf7fed8f9c3,test

An Inventory query could be used to obtain the list of Device IDs.  Note, the script is only expecting two columns in the order of Device ID and Enrollment Username.

It may assists to initially export additional columns to assist with device identification, but after adding the usernames, be sure to remove any of these additional columns in the CSV file.

image.png

  • Obtain the desired users base64 Application Token from the FileWave Administrators Assistant view

api-key.png

The following command may now be executed on macOS or Linux (a similar command could be executed on Windows) to action the process.

./bulk_change_device_authname.py --token {b5cb89a0-fe59-4cb1-9359-d72b79369c0} --host ExampleCo.filewave.net --mapping ./auth_username.csv

The script will give you feedback about the success or failure of any records.

Python Imports

The beginning of the script has a list of imports:

import argparse
import base64
import csv
import os
import re
import requests
import sys

If any are missing, e.g 'requests', it should be necessary to instal them.  The script should report such an error if any are missing when ran.  Some are available on a default Python setup.

It is possible to instal any missing.  For example, on macOS or Linux, the command may appear as (depending upon the location of Python)

/usr/local/bin/python3 -m pip install requests

Hopefully the script at this point has been successful and can be see as a great example of bulk actions.

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