Pushing Webpage Shortcuts to Desktop

Addigy's Custom Software features provide lots of flexibility for deploying files and apps to your devices. This article provides the simplest workflow for pushing a file your users' desktops that opens a specific URL, then this article will give you the simplest workflow.

First, download the "Open A Webpage.webloc" file that is attached to this article. Replace the inside of <string>https://www.addigy.com</string> with your URL and rename the file to your liking. Make sure that it still has the .webloc extension to the file.

Next, create a Custom Software and upload the .webloc file. If you need some guidance with Custom Software items, check out our article Creating Custom Software.

In the Custom Software item, copy these scripts to correctly move the .webloc file onto each user's desktop. Modify the content of the first line inside of the quotation marks to be the filename of your .webloc file.

Installation script:

filename="Open A Webpage.webloc"

for user in $(dscl . list /Users UniqueID | awk '$2 >= 500 {print $1}'); do
    userHome=$(dscl . read /Users/$user NFSHomeDirectory | awk '{print $2}')
    if [ -e "${userHome}/Desktop/${filename}" ]; then
        continue
    else
        if [ ! -d "${userHome}/Desktop" ]; then
            echo "User:${user} does not have a valid Desktop directory. Skipped this user."
            continue
        fi
        cp "./${filename}" "${userHome}/Desktop/${filename}"
        chown ${user}:staff "${userHome}/Desktop/${filename}"
        chmod 644 "${userHome}/Desktop/${filename}"
    fi
done

Condition script:

filename="Open A Webpage.webloc"

for user in $(dscl . list /Users UniqueID | awk '$2 >= 500 {print $1}'); do
    userHome=$(dscl . read /Users/$user NFSHomeDirectory | awk '{print $2}')
    if [ ! -e "${userHome}/Desktop/${filename}" ]; then
        echo "User does not have desktop link for ${filename}. Adding it..."
        exit 0
    else
        continue
    fi
done

echo "All users had the ${filename} link."
exit 1

Give your next Custom Software some rigorous testing, and you're good to go. Your users will now be able to access that web resource quickly and easily using the new desktop icon they have.