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mattdermody
Level 2.2: Froyo
Joined 2 years ago
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Re: REALLY NEED HELP
Agreed. @PO72 If it was that easy to just get back into a locked phone that regularly would be used maliciously by nefarious actors. We don't even know this is actually your phone that you're trying to get into. Good luck getting an email back from the "head CEO of Google" on your issues. I'm sure you're a blast at dinner parties, Bud.4Views0likes0CommentsRe: Action Required: Your app is not compliant with Google Play Policies
Thanks for sharing this. I'll add this to my list of many reasons why I don't trust or recommend using Managed Play for installing apps on company owned assets. It doesn't make sense to me that a company that owns both the mobile devices and the software being installed on those devices has to get permission from Google before being allowed to install that app on their devices.44Views0likes1CommentRe: Android app publish privately without google standard review
You can publish it privately through the Google Play developer console and then grant your end customers access to that application via their Organization ID. Privately uploaded apps still have to go through a Google review process. I'm not sure what you mean by providing the app's login credentials.9Views0likes0CommentsRe: Private app package name already in use
Incredible insights you bring to the table here. Thanks for explaining your background and perspective! You may want to repost some version of this to the introductions thread here: New to the community? Introduce yourself here... | Android Enterprise Customer Community - 3211Views1like1CommentRe: Private app package name already in use
Publishing an app through Google Play, even Privately, carries an additional layer of burden and scrutiny than just compiling an APK and providing it to end customers that need that app installed on their devices. There are extra requirements that Google enforces when uploading a new version of the app followed by an approval process wherein Google will review your app, sometimes over the course of multiple days before approving it for distribution, even privately. I am not sure about you're environment, but I deal with mission critical apps in the sense that if the app isn't running or working correctly a warehouse or retail store is down. These operations depend on the mobile apps we develop for all workflow execution in the building, payment & order processing, etc. If an end customer of mine needs an emergency upgrade to their Point of Sale mobile app or their end user warehouse execution app I don't want to tell them they have to wait an arbitrary amount of time for Google to approve the new app before they can install it on the devices that they own. Businesses that own their own devices and the software that runs on them don't typically want Google in the middle deciding what they can and can't install on their own assets. Many of Google and/or Androids features are built around consumer protections. I personally deal exclusively with corporate owned line of business shared assets where there is no consumer to protect. In these situations these extra restrictions and scrutiny of Google become a burden. I've also only really covered the delays in the app approval process in this response. This also doesn't even touch on how long it can actually take to deploy an app through managed play to a fleet of dedicated devices and the lack of proper version control. Once the new app version is approved that is only half the battle to getting it rolled out across a fleet of devices. I am honestly a little jealous of the perspective you have coming into this Android management space without any background experience of Device Administrator or the widespread usage of EMM API and Custom DPC prior to the push toward Cloud DPC AMAPI. To you this might just be how things work, whereas I come from a perspective of being frustrated that it used to work better for admins like myself and Google has made certain things progressively worse over time. I'm just constantly bitter that the dedicated device space is mostly ignored by Google but then we still get caught up in the trends toward concepts like Cloud DPC and AMAPI. I can't name a single end customer who was happy to go from DA to AEDO, and now potentially from Custom DPC to Cloud DPC. Each one of those steps is progressively worse relative to the ability to comprehensively manage a mission critical dedicated Android device. I find it interesting that the perspective of newcomers to the space is that the app developers are at fault here for not aligning with Google Play when my perspective is almost the exact opposite. As an app developer and EMM admin I have a view of the space that is more developer centric than EMM centric. I think the EMM, at least for the dedicated device space, should be selected based on the needs of the mission critical apps that it is supporting and I don't agree that the mission critical apps should have to change their distribution mechanisms or design approaches (eg. config files vs managed configurations) to comply with the limitations of the EMM. As much as I am an EMM fan and expert I am not afraid to acknowledge it is an ancillary support tool and not the primary business function compared with the business apps running on the devices. I admittedly somewhat of a contrarian in this viewpoint but feel the need to constantly speak up for the dedicated device space in the Android community as I often feel like the voice of that management use case. So please take what I have to say with a grain of salt and understand that my lens on the world is completely based around the Device Owner / Fully Managed/ Dedicated Device/ Line of Business use cases.0Views1like3CommentsRe: Private app package name already in use
Items that matter to me that are offered by Custom DPC based EMMs. Direct APK installation (unless Google can build and offer better version control) Offline OEMConfig/Managed configuration (i.e. not through MGPA) File management including delivery / retrieval Advanced Scripting Real time actions Remote Control10Views1like1CommentRe: Private app package name already in use
Custom DPC just offers significantly more control over fully managed line of business Android devices right now. Google wants everyone to move to AMAPI but they've largely neglected the line of business device use case on AMAPI and don't offer parity. I don't consider any AMAPI only EMMs like Intune to be capable of effectively managing line of business Android devices and won't ever think that until Google can get close to parity. I don't care if Google wants to deprecate Custom DPC they need to continue to hear that they aren't offering us a valid alternative in AMAPI yet. If you were using a Custom DPC based EMM for example you'd be able to install this Poppulo app directly on your devices without any question. You're frustrated that Poppulo isn't aligning their software release practices to the limitations of your own EMM.19Views0likes5CommentsRe: Android for digital signage?
My recommendation is the Elo Backpack with the software maintenance plan (OS360). It is very common practice for enterprise manufacturers to offer such a plan (Eg. LifeGuard OneCare from Zebra, Mobility Edge from Honeywell). I sell all of these manufacturers to my end customers and have never sold them without the corresponding software maintenance plan to guarantee access to long term security patches, OS upgrades, and. bug fixes. They have these plans decoupled from the hardware so you have the option of purchasing the hardware separate from the plan at a cheaper price. If you are an enterprise that needs access to the regular updates however then these plans are highly recommended.11Views1like0CommentsRe: Fleet device settings
I agree as well but I have to say if you have Knox AND WS1 right now you are already way better off than if you were using a random manufacturer and a less feature rich EMM like Intune. The Knox+WS1 combo will provide you with way more device level configurability even if this one particular configuration option isn't available. Also, why be upset at the lack of configurability of this option versus the alternative of being upset at Microsoft for forcing a change to Authenticator and being upset at Google for force updating the Authenticator app through Play without giving you better version control over the roll out. Imagine if you had been able to test the new version of that app and then prevent the roll out from occurring to your devices until you have the mediation in place. Google Play sadly does not provide us with those levels of version control. In situations like this I'm not frustrated by WS1 or Samsung for not providing me with a way to plug a recently sprung leak. I'm frustrated at Google and Microsoft for causing the leak in the first place.23Views0likes1CommentRe: Private app package name already in use
Moombas Intune can't handle direct APK installation for Line of Business devices on Android Enterprise devices. It had this capability for DA but not for Android Enterprise. As a representative of a software development company that also provides EMMs managed services we take the same stance as Poppulo here. We do not trust AMAPI based EMMs like Intune for fully managed device deployments and mandate that our end customers leverage a custom DPC based EMM that can install APKs directly on devices. The business applications are ultimately more important to the enterprise than the EMM being leveraged to manage the mobile devices. This is likely a counter view point to a lot of the folks in this community but is the vantage point I have being on both the app development and device management side of the fully managed mission critical device space. Based on this situation I don't fault Poppulo at all, I fault Intune for only supporting Managed Play for app installation and fault Google for not providing better Managed Play capabilities for the mission critical device space. Forcing developers to recompile a new bundle ID to work around a Google (and by proxy Intune) limitation and then getting upset with the developer when they don't want to do that doesn't make any sense to me. If the EMM can't handle the installation of APKs directly on mission critical /line of business Android Enterprise devices then it is not a sufficient EMM for managing those devices, in my opinion.56Views1like12CommentsRe: Intune now showing tenant name on lockscreen
That is unfortunate to hear this was pushed out to your devices unannounced by Intune and you have no obvious way of reversing it. I use SOTI MobiControl primarily and it has a configuration script where you can set a custom lockscreen message to be whatever you want. You can also pass in Macros / dynamic variable names and have those resolved automatically to have customizations of the message per device. This feature has been around for quite some time as I've been using it since at least early 2022. This is the script format that works in SOTI for reference. writeprivateprofstring LockScreenString Message %DEVICENAME% apply LockScreenString Maybe you'll get lucky and Intune will have something similar.371Views1like0CommentsRe: Managed Play Store Web App Fullscreen not working anymore
Did you ever review the version of System WebView reported on the devices? If the issue went away on its own it was likely fixed through automatic updates of WebView. WebKit is the browser engine for iOS, not Android.599Views0likes1CommentRe: requirements for provisioning an app on android 13
I could be wrong about this so I'd like others to chime in as well but my understanding is that Google is pretty restrictive these days about letting anyone declare Device Owner privileges. They are pushing people away from Custom DPC bit by bit toward Cloud DPC and don't seem particularly keen or interested in letting new entrants leverage this approach without their approval. Even though you might be attempting to just leverage this approach for internal company devices Google might not allow it due to possible nefarious use of that dangerous elevated permission level or also because they generally pushing people toward Cloud DPC anyway. I think their argument might be you're better off using a purpose built EMM to achieve the goals you're looking for, otherwise you're reinventing the wheel a bit. That's at least how I understand things but I'd be curious to hear other perspectives.207Views0likes1CommentRe: Is Google Play Closed tracks for testing only?
I completely agree. I try to highlight this risk to my end customers that insist on using feature limited AMAPI aligned EMMs like Intune that force us into using Private Closed Test tracks for production application usage on line-of-business devices. Sure we can maybe use this workaround to accommodate the usage of an EMM that can't install APKs directly on devices but this workaround is unofficial and could be cut off unexpectedly. Many people just don't understand these nuances of Android management until they run into an actual issue and realize they're painted into a corner.525Views0likes0CommentsRe: Is Google Play Closed tracks for testing only?
This is the exact position we take within our org. We develop enterprise applications that are not published to Public play that need tight version control for each of our end customers. We have ZERO appetite to provide custom compiles of the base APK with unique bundle IDs for every customer just to get around limitations of the Android Enterprise ecosystem. As a result of this our typical firm stance is that a custom DPC based EMM is required so that our customers can have comprehensive version control over the apps that they're installing since their EMM can install it directly on devices. Android Enterprise still falls very short when it comes to proper version control in a line of business device setting so we are generally stuck pushing people away from AMAPI / cloudDPC toward hybrid EMMs that offer Google Play AND direct APK installs. In edge cases where we don't have a choice we leverage the closed testing tracks concept but even that is a lot of administrative overhead because we run into other limitations like Intune only supporting the display of 10 closed test tracks. We have 100+ versions of our application and counting and therefore have to carefully choose which 10 versions to grant to each Org ID. The large majority of our end customers however opt to go with custom DPC based EMMs since they aren't willing to expose themselves to production risks caused by Google Play based mission critical app installs. I am very much aware that I am swimming against the current with this stance but this is based on years of personal experience with Android Enterprise and constant re-evaluation of it's capabilities. App installs via Google Play are just not reliable or robust enough for line-of-business app and device environments.531Views1like0CommentsRe: Hide an app in the private Google play store
I am not sure about the capabilities of Neurons but some custom DPC based EMMs like SOTI MobiControl, 42Gears, and, WS1 allow you to install APKs directly on the devices without involving Google Play at all. That would certainly solve this particular problem.510Views1like3Comments