[Day 1] Community festival: Highlighting 3 great resources of information for the Android Enterprise community

[Timmy]

Hi Android Enterprise community ! 

As an IT professional with focus on securing and managing different types of devices for customers all over the world, its important to keep up with the changing landscape and be on top of whats going on in the different ecosystems that exist out there. In this post I want to highlight 3 things that I think has had the greatest impact for me and my customers and that I would recommend anyone working within this field to keep an eye on.

Android Enterprise Community discussions highlights

There have been a lot of great conversations in this community for the past year and I wanted to mention a few that stood out for me and the impact of the community. I'm a strong believer in that whats makes a great product is also the community around it. Being able to interact directly between users using the product, developers and Program Managers working on the product makes the product better.

https://www.androidenterprise.community/t5/general-discussions/is-there-any-way-to-disable-google-pl...

https://www.androidenterprise.community/t5/service-announcements/partial-fix-some-management-policie...

https://www.androidenterprise.community/t5/admin-discussions/distributing-paid-apps/td-p/653

Android Enterprise Academy

https://info.androidenterprise.training

One of the best resources I've encountered in my path to learn and understand what Android Enterprise is from a conceptual perspective to more in-depth technical is without a doubt the free training and certificate program under Android Enterprise Academy.

There are 3 levels of certification

Associate
Professional
Expert

I keep going back to the training from time to time when I need to refresh my memory and I can't say that about a lot of other trainings I've done through out my years. That to me shows how good the quality of the training is. For me who has in the past created a lot of training material and also taught technical classes its important to understand that people are different in how they learn and are able to process information and I find that the training offered here manage to address that with the confinement of online training.

Developer documentation

3rd but not least, I want to highlight to the developer documentation. I'm an IT Professional but not a developer, however this has not stopped me from getting value from the developer documentation.

https://developers.google.com/android/work/tools
https://developers.google.com/zero-touch/guides/overview

When it comes to Android Enterprise I have found myself many times going to the developer documentation to understand certain features and in what version of Android they were introduced or trying to understand what is needed to use the features in troubleshooting purposes. Maybe there's a need to create a service request or Incident to your EMM or directly to Google, adding information that could help that points to the documentation is often valuable information that could expedite the handling of the ticket.

Are there any discussion that stands out for you ? Or do you have any tips or great resources you want to share ?

I want to give a special thanks to @Lizzie  for all the great work she does here and all the other community members that takes part in the discussions here.  

Timmy Andersson
Device management expert & Freelance consultant
www.timmyit.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmy-andersson-61408292/

[Lizzie]

Thank you @Timmy, for kickstarting our Community festival and for your lovely overview. 

It's fantastic to see the discussions here in the community that have been interesting to you. I agree, I think having good conversations and experience sharing really helps to provide extra context. So personally I too love these types of discussions. 😀

Do you have a favourite type of way you like to consume information, ie. videos, written articles, podcasts? 

Also, are there other things you'd like to see in the community? 

[Timmy]

For me personally the way I consume information depends on what type of information it is. Often more casual or not too deep technical information is good for podcasts or videos. When I need to really learn something technical I prefer written articles. 

What I really would like to see is more technical content for us nerds 😁  And discussion around upcoming features not just what they do but how they are built,  configured and managed. 

[Alex_Muc]

I can only agree with the positive feedback on the Android Enterprise Academy. The training material is very well organized, helpful and interesting. Since it's free, anyone who manages Android devices should take a look at it and try to get certified. 😃

If you are still evaluating devices, UEM or resellers, the Enterprise Solutions Directory can also be helpful:
https://androidenterprisepartners.withgoogle.com/

I also often use pages from this URL. It's intended for app developers, but it can also be helpful for admins, e.g. if you need to pass on information for managed configurations. The page on system updates, for example, was very helpful for me because I was able to understand how the time span for the freeze period is calculated using the code examples.
https://developer.android.com/work

[Timmy]

Thanks for sharing and I totally agree with you.