Running 3rd-party applications on MacOS and Filesystem blocking on MacOS

[thonglepas]

Hi,

We are planning to create an assessment using SEB. The assessment will be run on candidate's BYO devices. During the assessment, the candidate will require to use some 3rd-party applications (Adobe apps, etc.) to complete the assessment. My questions are:

• Is there any way we can allow 3rd-party applications to run in SEB in MacOS?
• Due to the ability to access filesystem via 3rd-party applications, is there any ways we can restrict the access for the filesystem except for some certain folders in SEB?

Thank you very much!

[danschlet]

• Running 3rd-party applications on macOS is possible as of SEB 3.4, see the current beta version on the Releases page.
• SEB 3.4 can prevent the system-provided Open File/Save As dialogs to be displayed. It also resets the open documents feature of most macOS applications (so if you had documents open when you used an app, those won't open when you start that app in SEB).
• Some apps should only be started in SEB by downloading and opening a document of that app, as otherwise they will show a "new file" window which lists recent files the user worked on. This is for example the case with Microsoft Office apps. There is a setting in SEB's Settings/Applications/Permitted Processes. For such apps, you should deselect "Allow manual start".
• SEB 3.4 currently doesn't show a custom folder which would be accessible in this Multi App Mode. But it has the feature that you can only select files for upload in a web assessment solution with the "Choose file" for upload button which were previously downloaded inside SEB. So if working with third party applications, you should provide download links for template files you want students to work on with 3rd-party apps. When they click such links, these files get downloaded and open in the according 3rd-party app. Then they have to save the file they worked on (with cmd-S) with the same filename and can upload that file to the web assessment solution.