November 2021

Geofencing Capabilities of Entgra MDM

Photo by abillion on Unsplash

We’re pleased to announce that Entgra MDM has yet another new feature – geofencing capabilities. Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) admins can define required virtual perimeters for controlling access over specified boundaries and perform some operations to those which are inside of those boundaries. Geofencing is a very useful feature in governing access for user groups. It can be conveniently set up by drawing boundaries over areas on the map.

Let’s discuss how the geofencing capabilities work through an example. Imagine that the Ministry of Education wants to provide tablets or mobile devices for school children in rural areas for online learning during the pandemic. And they wish to provide all the learning materials to the devices and manage those device capabilities. Additionally, they want to ensure that these devices do not leave school premises. The Ministry can use geofencing capabilities to monitor the devices’ locations, manage capabilities, and perform certain actions.

The Functionality of Geofencing Capabilities

Before you create a geofence, you need to set up the Alerting Configurations under the Platform Configurations. You can provide an email address where you can receive alerts. According to your use case, you can define whether users cross or access boundaries.

After defining the configurations you will be able to create geofences in Entgra MDM. The following data should be provided to create a new geofence.

  • Geofence name: Provide a name for identifying the geofence
  • Description: Add more details about the geofence
  • Device group(s): Assign a group (or groups) that consists of the devices that need to belong to the geofence
  • Event configurations: Add the given alert configuration to the relevant field

Afterwards, you need to mark the boundary line on the map. By using a shape such as a polygon or a circle, mark the area that you want to define as the geofence and then click on the Create button. The geofence table lists all the geofences that you create.

Returning to our example, after creating a geofence by including the school boundaries, if one of the students tries to leave the school with a device, the head of the school receives an alert and he/she can track the device location. The head of the school can also view how many devices in the relevant geofence are active at any given time. In addition, it can check the location of the provided devices and the device count, preventing devices from being misplaced.

Not only that, the group (or groups) that created the geofence can apply the required educational materials at the same time, adding various restrictions to the devices and managing them.

Entgra MDM has extensive enterprise wide MDM features that you can customize for your business needs. Learn more about the product and how we can help here.

You can also get in touch with us via contact@entgra.io

Allow and Block Listed Apps With Entgra MDM

Manage device applications by using our latest feature

Entgra MDM now enables you to allow and block listed apps with the latest feature. Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) admins can manage device applications by using the blacklisting and whitelisting technique.

By way of an example, think of a school or an educational institute that provides tablets to their students for online learning. Admins need to restrict several apps from these devices (such as social media apps) in these scenarios. This means that these apps will be blacklisted whilst other apps, such as educational ones, would be installed in the devices sans interaction with the students.

The app blacklisting and whitelisting feature help you to meet these requirements. App whitelisting means that all applications, except the ones explicitly defined, are blocked. End users can only use apps that have been explicitly defined. App blacklisting occurs when defined applications cannot be installed on target devices. If the given black listed apps are already installed, they will be removed from devices.

The Entgra IoT Platform has an Application Restriction Settings policy with the capability to manage device applications for appropriate users. You can access this policy in the Android policy section on the Entgra IoT Platform. In this feature, you have the ability to select the appropriate app list type. Depending on the type selected, the functionality is as follows:

Allow List

After selecting the allow list you need to add these apps’ names and their package names. When the policy is applied to the device, only the listed app will be available and other apps will disappear.

Block List

Provide the names of the apps and package names that you want to add to the block list. When the policy is applied to the device, only the listed app will be removed and other apps will remain in the device.

In this way, you can change the number of apps on devices according to your preferences.

Let us return to the example. The head of the school or institution can add apps and their package names that he/she wants to block from the devices to the Block list. These listed apps will be removed from the devices while the required apps will remain. On the other hand, if he/she wants to add some educational or learning aid apps to the students’ devices, these can be installed through this policy.

Entgra MDM has extensive enterprise wide MDM features that you can customize for your business needs. Learn more about the product and how we can help here.

You can also get in touch with us via contact@entgra.io