Gmail corrupts

[Edward]

Hi everyone,

One of my colleague encounters an issue that when using the Gmail app, it shows the app stops running and crashed, but if we don't enroll the device into Android Enterprise, it can work properly, so is there any settings we can do? I didn't block this Gmail app and had enable user to add google account.

Thanks everyone

Hers is the video link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1prKkv9PLYmX4DLFzea9T9VkcX9UZYQb0/view?usp=sharing

[Moombas]

There can be several reasons but did you try to update it?
If you use a Google managed play store you need to provide this system app via it as well i would also recommend to do this for webview as well (as far you don'T encounter any issues with latest version(s).

[jasonbayton]

Hi Eric,

Thanks for the video, it's super helpful to see your issue immediately very clearly.

Google Play Services is crashing. While it should handle things more gracefully it looks like this isn't the case.

Do you permit adding accounts in your policies? If not this would explain the crash - policy blocks a feature but the device isn't handling it well.

If you were to permit accounts though, you then risk opening up the device in question to the full Google Play Store and mixing work/personal data, this isn't such a good thing unless your use case considers that safe.

The alternative would be to configure email differently within Gmail. Is it a Google Workspace account wanting to be added? If so, it can be via exchange instead. If not, IMAP for consumer Google accounts can work. This way your users get to add mail without adding additional Google accounts to the device and therefore prevents DLP issues I referenced above.

I made a lot of assumptions here, feel free to clarify your setup and we'll take it from there 🙂

[Moombas]

And depending on the MDM used (and if it's a work gmail account), you can add a GMail account via MDM instead of the user to enter it manually.

[Edward]

Hi RAS, thanks for your reply. We don't use a work gmail, all employees uses their personal account, that's why we enable adding personal account but it didn't go as we expected😂

[Edward]

Hi Jason, thanks for your reply, let me clear the doubts. 

We had already enable user to add their personal Google account, it's acceptible in our case. The google account we use is not google workspace one.

What's weired for me is that we haven't input the email address yet, then it crashes. If it crashes after we input, I will assume that this kind of email is not accepted

Also when we disable adding personal google account, it will prompt a window saying this is restricted by the admin when we click the gmail button, so i am sure in the video it shows the app stops running doesn't mean we had disabled it

For the alternative solution you mentioned using IMAP, i haven't used that before, need to look into it

Hope this can help you understand better and looking forward to your reply

[jasonbayton]

OK sounds like policies aren't necessarily directly to blame then. 

You'll need to obtain a bug report on the problem device ideally. This will show the reason for the crash within the logs, and potentially how to resolve. 

I'd vaguely believe it's related to Google Play Services or the account services on the device that crash the moment the device is requested to add a Google account, but without seeing your policies and device details it's not something I can replicate locally. 

Enable debugging, replicate the crash (with the timestamp to the *second* so it can be found in logs) and see what you can find. No need for IMAP if you get a cause.