We are delighted to introduce Entgra UEM 5.1! Last month, we released Entgra UEM 5.0 with its all-new UI, updated analytics and dashboards, new support policies for Android and Windows, improved Docker support for product profiles, and enhanced API integrations.
Entgra UEM 5.1 is an extended version of the product that encompasses our Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Management (MAM) capabilities in addition to integrating Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities within a single platform.
While there are no architectural changes in Entegra UEM 5.1, we have introduced new features, improvements, and bug fixes. We considered numerous customer issues when developing these upgrades.
Here’s a comprehensive list of feature upgrades in this release:
Define permissible account types – You can specify the number of accounts per type and the account types allowed on the device.
Display changed device name in agent – Device name changed by admin via APIs in the agent now visible.
Trigger operation simultaneously in a device group – Ability to simultaneously deliver one or more actions to a device group.
Direct publishing of app releases – Authorized users can publish releases without following the app lifecycle.
Alternate app installing capability – An alternative mechanism in the agent that enables installing apps hosted in environments other than the app store, and/or to be used if the standard installation fails.
Complete file access permission for Android 11 and above – Improvements to storage access related permissions on Android 11 and above.
We hope to give our customers a better and more effective product with the release of Entgra UEM 5.1. To learn more about the product, refer to the documentation here. If you have any questions, do reach out to us at contact@entgra.io
If we are to describe the modern banking, financial services, and insurance industry (BFSI) in one word, we would say complex. With the onset of digitalization, many customer services are now online; banking and insurance mobile apps are increasingly becoming the norm. Apart from this transformation of customer services, traditional banks are facing competition from neobanks – technology-driven, agile banking and financial service providers. Neobanks often have lower operational costs as they are mainly online-based. Similarly, “born digital” insurers that leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are competing with established insurance companies. We have also seen the rise of super apps that offer consumer services through third party integrations with several digital payment options (i.e., WeChat, Grab, AliPay, Gojek, to name a few). To stay ahead of these new disruptive developments and remain relevant to younger, digital native consumers, traditional BFSI companies are adopting digital-first strategies.
Competition is not the only factor that contributes to the complexity of today’s banking and financial services industry. As more services are available online and accessible from mobile devices, there are significantly higher security risks. In 2020, the BFSI industry was the top target for cyberattacks. The number of devices used in this industry is rising due to digitalization. Microfinance and insurance companies also have a mobile workforce, where employees travel to many locations to support their customer base.
The BFSI industry in Sri Lanka and digitalization
The BFSI industry in Sri Lanka is undergoing rapid growth. Innovation has become the defining characteristic of this growth, as institutions strive to differentiate their products and services. Digital onboarding, QR based payments, digital wallets, mobile applications, and mobile payments are some of these new services. With innovation and greater device use, device security inevitably becomes a major concern for the industry. Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) has a pivotal role to play in catering to this innovative landscape and making it secure for all the customers. In this highly sensitive market, even the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) introduced explicit guidelines to ensure the protection and security of mobile devices so that users are not exposed to threats in an uncontrollable manner.
Any digital-first strategy must then address flexibility, efficiency, and security. Discussions around device management and security often lead to Mobile Device Management (MDM). Let us start with some basics. MDM is a software solution that empowers IT admins to manage, monitor, and secure devices across different operating systems in an enterprise IT ecosystem. Banks, financial services providers, and insurance companies cannot control customers’ devices – but you can control your own devices and provide secure services to your customers.
In this blog we will delve into some common challenges faced by organizations and how you can address them by implementing an MDM strategy.
Mobility challenges in the BFSI industry
Challenges in the BFSI industry vary – they range from securing data to ensuring that corporate devices are used for their intended purposes. Each organization will have their own challenge. Some common issues are:
Centralized management of devices
One of the biggest challenges in Sri Lanka’s BFSI industry is the lack of a proper system that manages devices and tracks their usage. The latter is to monitor whether the field sales agents are not misusing corporate devices by using these devices to view non-related videos, play games, install improper wallpapers or apps that can lead to a loss of productivity or damage the organization’s reputation.
Launching apps and pushing app updates
In the microfinance industry, field sales agents are required to visit remote areas where the WiFi connectivity could be weak and/or challenging. Under these circumstances, pushing app updates is a daunting task.
Data security
The BFSI industry possesses large volumes of sensitive data. It is vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Any compromises in data security are costly for an organization’s reputation and will have an adverse impact on its business operations. The BFSI industry faces immense pressure to protect data in case a device is stolen or lost and must have the ability to erase all data stored in a device.
Benefits of an MDM strategy
Centralized device, app, and data management
An IT ecosystem with many different types of devices, apps, and data will have multiple endpoints. With unified endpoint management (UEM) capabilities, you will be able to centralize all your UEM functions in one place – regardless of the operating systems that your devices use.
Faster onboarding of new customers and team members
The MDM solution will oversee identity management – authentication, passwords, and authorization. The onboarding of new customers can become an online, device based function – which is more efficient and faster than dealing with cumbersome manual tasks. Similarly, granting the right authorization for your team members to use corporate devices will become a simpler task.
Mitigating effects during security breaches
Lost or misplaced devices, or any loss of data from apps need quick responses. MDM solutions provide geotracking capabilities to locate devices remotely, plus the ability to lock devices and delete data in the case of a security breach. This way, you can prevent the mishandling of devices and your all important data.
Remote troubleshooting
MDM solutions provide remote troubleshooting capabilities which is especially helpful if you have team members working in many geographic locations i.e., based in the field. In the event of device problems, these team members are not dependent on admins who are based elsewhere to solve such issues.
Device usage control and SIM lock-in
Restrict enterprise device use to required apps only through app blacklisting features to ensure that devices are used for work-related purposes. Moreover, you can also bind mobile SIM data to these apps only so that you do not incur any additional costs with your data packages.
Business intelligence
MDM solutions give you device usage statistics that you can view on dashboards. The data gives you insights into team performance and any app upgrades required.
Extensive integrations and customizations
You can customize the solution to suit your specific requirements, with the necessary dashboards, reporting, and analytics features.
At Entgra, we understand each of the challenges faced by the BFSI industry and we have a highly customizable product that will enable you to respond to rapid changes. Entgra MDM is a centralized device management and unified endpoint management platform that helps you manage your many device identities securely. You have access to a host of features such as remote device management, analytics and dashboards, and simplified device enrollment. Learn more here and start the conversation with us.
We all know about the benefits of clean air for our health, lifestyles, and the planet. With emissions increasing globally, improving air monitoring capabilities is becoming even more important for environmental agencies. A part of these improvements lies in having access to data and information about air quality, as it is ultimately these insights that become useful when enacting regulations.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) is the standard for measuring air quality. It includes information about pollutants such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, aerosols, and ground level ozone. Air quality sensors measure the quantities of these pollutants present in a particular microclimate.
An IoT powered framework comprises multiple sensors, devices, and communication modems connected to a network. Measuring air quality can be time consuming and costly, however. And sometimes, there may be questions about how best to use the data collected. An IoT powered framework makes this process easier, provides you with a series of options that best fit your budget, and helps you reduce the manual work required. In this blog, we’ll explain how devices function in an air quality measurement system, how an IoT solution works typically, uses of the data collected, and the benefits of an IoT powered data collection system.
The data collection framework: Device capabilities
The sensors, devices, and communication modems of such a system will collect data (i.e. air pollutant quantities). You can select from a range of equipment based on your budget – from low cost, lower precision to expensive, high precision ones. Each type of device will have different capabilities:
Security measures – The market contains different communication modes and protocols with varying security measures, so it is important for you to understand these measures in advance.
Data collection methods – Some devices collect and transfer data in real time, while others perform these functions in batches.
Computing functions – Some devices function as “dumb” data collectors and others can detect anomalies, sanitize, and perform automatic calibrations.
Power sources – Devices deployed indoors in remote locations can use power directly from an electricity grid. There are also devices that use power from solar panels to charge batteries.
The role of an IoT solution
The IoT solution will retrieve the data that your sensors, devices, and communication modems collect. Apart from data retrieval capabilities, the IoT solution will also oversee these functions:
Supporting different wire and application level protocols
Identifying degrading, rogue, or malfunctioning equipment
Collecting, storing, sanitizing, and enriching sensor readings, plus detecting anomalies
Integrating with similar weather-associated APIs and validate the data
Facilitating data sharing using industry standard managed API patterns
Calculating the AQI value and air quality category
How can I use the data collected?
We have discovered that the above question is quite a common one. The answer is that there are many applications and integrations that you can explore to create user-friendly data consumption/visibility models and even new revenue streams.
Develop different types of data consumption applications for different audiences. Configure the data so that it is visible on dashboards, embedded widgets, or mobile apps for user convenience.
Share data with different audiences – Environmental, aviation or military authorities, educational institutions, research bodies, the general public, etc. If you decide to share data in this way, you can also think about a monetization model.
Benefits of an IoT powered data collection system to determine air quality
A robust data collection system, the possession of a rich set of data, and the above mentioned application options are some of the obvious benefits. Some other ways you can benefit from an IoT powered data collection system are:
Cost control – As we mentioned earlier, devices have varying costs and precision levels. You can decide what types of devices that you want to use based on your budget and overall objectives for collecting the data.
24/7 data availability – This is especially important to provide up-to-date AQI information to the public and other organizations; and issue alerts when required. The data will also form the cornerstone of planning air safety regulations.
Accessibility – You can use these devices in all environments, in urban and rural areas. It provides you with a mechanism to monitor the air quality in the more remote areas with no personnel being physically present in these areas too.
Once you have an understanding of the devices required for creating a data collection framework, your next step is to work with an IoT solutions provider and select the right technology platform. We built the Entgra IoT Platform with connectivity in mind – it provides you with the application building blocks to integrate all your devices under one platform. The platform addresses key technology needs for a data collection framework, such as extensive integration, data processing, extensible architecture, and data sharing via APIs. Find out how we can help you.
Entgra MDM is a unified platform for developing, managing, and integrating Unified Endpoints (UEM), Enterprise Internet of Things (IoT), and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM).
Asgardeo is an IDaaS developed by WSO2. It is a developer-friendly platform for managing user identities and accessing management seamlessly. This blog will explain the configurations that you need to do on Asgardeo and Entgra MDM.
What is an external IDP?
In a nutshell, an external identity provider is a service that manages and stores user identities. It provides authentication and authorization services to other applications and services. Although Entgra MDM has an in-built identity server that can leverage all identity and access management (IAM) related services, it also provides flexibility to developers as they can connect with external IDPs.
Configuring Asgardeo
First, create an Asgardeo account and the rest is easy. Use the following link to sign up.
Creating an organization
The concept of organization is something similar to the term tenant of WSO2 Identity Server. Create an organization by clicking on the dropdown menu on the top-left corner of the page.
This will prompt a simple form where we have to enter the name of the organization we are trying to create. (Note: this will allow only simple alphabetic characters and does not support other numerical, special characters or capital letters.)
For the purposes of this blog, I’ve created an organization named “devorganization”. Once the organization is set, create a new OIDC application.
Creating a new OIDC application
Click “Develop” on the top menu of the Asgardeo console and it will take you to the following page.
Then click on the “New Application” button and choose “Standard-based application”.
Give a name to the application and make sure to choose OIDC as the protocol. Check “Management application” if the application needs to access any management APIs of the organization. Finally, click on “Register” to create the application.
Inside the application settings, go to protocols and update the grant types as follows:
Add https://localhost:9443/commonauth as the Authorized redirect URL. This is the URL to which the Asgardeo will redirect after completing authentication.
Creating new custom user-attributes
When using external IDPs, although the users will be stored inside the external IDP, they might have to be provisioned inside Entgra MDM using just-in-time provisioning (JIT). Map attributes such as username, role, etc. with the local attributes. To create a new attribute, click “Manage” on the top menu and then navigate to the attributes section.
Click on “Attributes” and then proceed to “New attributes” to add a new attribute. Create a couple of attributes for username and role, namely the “asgardeo-username” and “asgardeo-role”.
After creating the attributes, it will redirect you to the configuration page of the attribute. Under this configuration, check the two configurations below and click on the update button to save the configurations.
These two configuration will enable the display of these attributes in the user profile and make them mandatory.
Configuring the scopes
Configure the scopes to map the above attributes against “openid” scope, so that these attributes will pass during JIT provisioning. Under the “Manage” section, click on “Scopes”.
Click the edit icon of the “Open ID” scope and then click the “New Attribute” button inside it to add an attribute to this scope.
Check the “Asgardeo Username” and “Asgardeo Role” attributes and click on the “Save” button
Go to the created application and edit the user attributes as follows and click “Update” to save these changes:
Creating a new user account
You must then create a new user account to test the Asgardeo authentication flow. Under the “Manager” section, click on the “Users” section to view the user management page. Click on the “Add User” button to create a new user.
Create a new user by filling out the following fields along with a temporary password.
After creating the user account, go to the user’s profile and update the attributes that were created earlier and click on the “Update” button to save the changes.
Changing the subject claim of Asgardeo to username
By default, the User ID is set as the subject claim in Asgardeo. Entgra MDM will be looking for a username under the subject claim of the ID token. Therefore, we might have to update the subject claim of Asgardeo using their management APIs. Invoke the following APIs using the CURLs provided in the given order to change the subject claim.
Generate an access token using the client credentials of the application.
Search for all the applications under the organization and find the application-ID of the application you have created.
curl --location --request GET 'https://api.asgardeo.io/t/<organization_name>/api/server/v1/applications' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <access_token>'
Retrieve the application details using the above application-ID.
curl --location --request GET 'https://api.asgardeo.io/t/<organization_name>/api/server/v1/applications/<application_id>' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer <access_token>'
Patch the application by changing the sub-claim to asgardeo_username. Change the values of the claim mappings and requested claims, based on the response received in step 3.
So far we have completed the Asgardeo configuration successfully. Now let’s move on to configuration of Entgra MDM.
Creating a new user role
To explore various features of Entgra’s web applications, a user might need certain permissions. You have to create a new role for that and assign a few permissions. Inside the carbon console, click on “Add” under the “Users and Roles” section and then click on “Add New Role”. Let’s create a role called “test-role” and then click “Next” to add permissions.
You can now see a permission tree with a list of permissions. Click on the “device-mgt” permission and it will choose the child permissions automatically.
Adding a new Identity Provider
Log into the carbon console of Entgra MDM via https://localhost:9443/carbon and click on “Add” under the Identity Provider sections on the left vertical menu. You will see the following page and can configure the basic configuration as shown below:
Configure the “Claim Configuration” as shown below. Here we are mapping the Asgardeo Role attribute with our internal role claim.
Configure the “Role Configuration” as shown below. We are trying to map the “Asgardeo Role” attribute value against an internal role named “Internal/devicemgt-user” that is already configured inside the product.
Configure the” Federated Authenticators” as shown below. Replace the client-id and client-secret with your Asgardeo application’s credentials.
Configure the Just-in-Time provisioning to “Silent provisioning”.
Configuring Service Provider
Entgra MDM comes with multiple web applications. Each of these web applications will have a service provider created inside the carbon console. To view the service providers, navigate to the Service Providers page. For this tutorial purpose, let’s try to configure Entgra’s Endpoint Management application with Asgardeo. Edit the Endpoint Management application’s service provider from the Service Providers page. If you cant see the service provider, try to log in to the endpoint management application at least once through the following URL: https://localhost:9443/endpoint-mgt.
Under the service provider, change the Authentication type to “Federated Authentication” and chose “Asgardeo” as the identity provider.
Voila! Now, we have successfully configured an Entgra MDM application, to SSO with Asgardeo IDaaS. Now you can log in to the https://localhost:9443/endpoint-mgt application using Asgardeo.
I hope that you found this blog useful. If you have any questions, do reach out to us here.
The healthcare industry is one of the best examples where a multitude of devices are used daily by a large number of people, ranging from healthcare professionals to patients and visitors. Over the years the sheer number of devices used in the healthcare industry has grown and the Internet of Things (IoT) healthcare market is estimated to grow to USD 260.75 billion by 2027.
Increasingly, mobile computing devices such as phones, tablets, and portable computers are used to streamline certain administrative operations such as channelling/ appointment scheduling, report storage, set up self-service kiosks, and displaying information on doctors’ availability.
Devices used in this industry broadly fall within two categories – devices that are solely used for medical purposes and hospital operations, and devices used for patient entertainment purposes during their hospital stay (i.e. tablets with a range of apps that patients can use).
These devices, particularly those used for medical purposes and hospital operations, collect, store, and transmit sensitive personal data about individual health conditions and past medical records. Any data leak, whether accidental or in some cases deliberate, is costly both in monetary terms and reputational damage to the hospital or medical clinic. Moreover, the fact that many hospitals and medical clinics have BYOD policies adds a further level of complexity.
All these developments present a number of challenges to IT teams in this industry. For one, data security is of paramount importance. Secondly, these teams are responsible for device maintenance and oftentimes, this is a manual and time consuming task involving devices placed in many locations where a team member is required to be physically present. Thirdly, devices require frequent security and application updates, and monitoring. Finally, devices have to be replaced when they no longer function properly.
MDM Solutions Have the Capabilities To Empower IT Teams
This is where a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution helps. Recently a large hospital chain that we worked with decided to use a MDM solution to securely manage all of the devices used across multiple hospital locations throughout the country. This hospital chain required the following:
Centrally managed system – for tablets, phones, and public signage units used for channeling, bookings, and other operational functions.
Automated updates – presently, security, OS, and app updates are performed manually.
Enhanced security – anyone who has access to a device gains access to all the system level settings. Since a majority of these devices are located within public areas, it was impractical to limit physical access.
Onboarding and authorization for devices – management software was not used for device onboarding and devices are connected to the hospital network for internal access.
Prevention of malpractices – eliminate instances where sensitive data is compromised on purpose by any employees and the separation of access for work-related use from personal use where employees use their personal devices.
After working with several vendors in the past, the hospital chain has identified their pain points and the ways through which data leaks can occur. Through Entgra MDM, we have been able to provide the following capabilities to address the hospital chain’s concerns:
Centralized device management
One of the greatest benefits of centralized device management is that IT teams can manage an unlimited number of devices that use varying operating systems (i.e. Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, etc.) using one technology platform.
Data security, access controls, and onboarding
A single technology platform also helps with device and data security. IT teams can use the MDM solution to enable authentication (MultiFactor Authentication or Single Sign On). This way, only authorized employees can gain access to devices for work related purposes only. This is particularly helpful when BYOD policies are in place.
Device lock-in
Device misuse and loss are common concerns in the healthcare industry. In the event that a device is lost or stolen, or of an attempted unauthorized access, IT teams can remotely lock the devices to prevent any data leaks.
Remote maintenance and monitoring
Device maintenance and monitoring are time consuming tasks, requiring many resources from the IT team. Using a MDM solution eliminates this need, as the IT team can now perform these tasks remotely, from any location and need not be physically present at the device locations.
Security, OS, and app updates
A MDM solution enables frequent security and app updates are installed in devices in real time.
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to loom over us. With hopes of opening countries and returning to normalcy, we take one step forward, only to fall back two, with tightened masks. It surely will be a while before life as we once knew it can be restored.
Thrust with incertitude at all levels from economic subsistence, vocational hardship, healthcare exigencies, and the unpredictability of life in general, our core existential strategy for the last two years has primarily been inclined towards that of basic survival centered around us as individuals, our close-knit families and communities, and the associated temporal assets. The pandemic epiphany has brought about drastic changes in our lifestyles, calling us to revise our priorities with a new reality check in life.
For business enterprises, this is bad news and has been so for the past two years.
The Trending Story InNumbers
As with every historical industrial revolution, the effects of the pandemic will shape the economic trends for the future. Unsurprisingly, there will be an evident increase in remote working. A recent Gartner poll found that48% of employees will likely work remotely at least part of the time after COVID-19 compared to 30% before the pandemic.Similarly, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that more than 20% of the global workforce could work the majority of its time away from the office – and equally importantly, be just as effective.A consequent HR trend analysis by them indicatesthat 32% of organizations are replacing full time employees with contingent workers as a cost-saving measure. Prepped up for this, in a recent Gartner poll, 90% of HR leaders said employees would be allowed to work remotely even once COVID-19 vaccines are widely available.
As indicated by these statistics, we have embraced what worked well from the pandemic and are progressing forward retaining the lessons learned. There’s no going back now. Digitally enabled productivity gains have accelerated the Fourth Industrial Revolution powered by technology and defined by operational models that survived above the pandemic predicaments.
Remote Working or the ability to Work From Anywhere (WFA) is clearly here to stay. So is the hybrid work model as has been discovered in a recent HR trend analysis by Gartner.
Accordingly, the most favorable operational model driving business transformations in the predictable future is that of the Hybrid Work model where employees interact with each other with a mix of distributed, co-located premises synchronously, and/or asynchronously.
Your employees are now empowered with the choice of how best productivity is accomplished – your job is to ensure they are sufficiently equipped to do so.
Are We Ready? Fitting Device Strategy for Your Ecosystem
Managing a digital ecosystem of disparate devices on different platforms can be quite a challenge. Even more so are the conundrums involved with the smooth operation of digital systems whilst being caught unawares by the virus. It is therefore imperative that we make the most of what we have for continued existence of operations under the prevailing constraints.
In one of our recent undertakings, we set out to empower public field officers by helping them digitize their routine tasks. Whilst managing to effectively map the skill sets to devices and the appropriate technology during the project, we also analyzed and outlined how the government administrators in Sri Lanka can benefit from a centralized strategy to monitor and manage the devices deployed in the field.
Ideally, a complete device strategy is woven around the business requirements of the enterprise, its device engagement criteria, product building, operational efficiency, scaling potential, and the extent of available technical support. Value creation from a long-term perspective and sustainability of device deployment with integration are vital aspects to be considered for a productive device strategy.
With our varied Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, Entgra can help you formulate the most fitting strategy for your enterprise. Our recommendations precede a comprehensive analysis of your device specifications, their functionality and configurations, defined ownership and administrative policies, pre-work device check, monitoring and their distribution, complete with a pilot run on device deployment in the field. As part of our assistance in managing your ecosystem, we will also help you with App development, identity and access management (IAM) and storage options.
Resilience and Agility: The Way Forward
Resilience, in enterprise terms, is a measure of your ability to swiftly adapt to disruptions while maintaining continuous business operations and safeguarding your employees, assets, and overall brand equity. Resilient organizations are better able to respond and correct their course quickly with changes.
Faced with the adversities introduced by the pandemic, enterprises that are actively taking measures to optimally tackle the changes are positioned with a competitive edge to be able to progressively move forward retaining most of their strength in vying to make the most of the situation.
Building a more responsive organization in terms of infrastructure and operational flow to increase agility and flexibility with room for flexing is therefore of utmost importance. This in turn translates into facilitating seamless workflows and remote working environments against a backdrop of changing and evolving technology usage, both by organizations and individuals.
Entgra offers you a single platform for device integration with comprehensive endpoint management capabilities where you are able to expose devices as APIs securely with identity federation for managing human and device identities. Enabling custom integrations with broad built-in capabilities, and for developing end-to-end applications, our secure, customizable platform can manage all types of devices and applications. Complete with device and endpoint data analytics for systematic decision making, our IoT platform together with our Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions will enable you to remain resilient, relevant, and flexible to respond to present and future changes.
Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help you.
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.
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.
This blog is the second part of a series that deep dives into Entgra’s Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) capabilities. Through this blog series, we aim to provide a better understanding of how Entgra’s technology can help you manage and secure your devices, improve the performance of your employees, and increase business profits through seamless device management.
Transfer Your Files and Perform Operations in Local Device Files
Imagine that you are managing a sales team. Your day to day activities involve sending sales reports or any other kind of find to your team members’ mobile phones or tablets. Or perhaps you need to edit files that you have already sent by renaming it or delete unnecessary files stored in a device. These actions can be performed easily when you are in the office.
Now imagine that your sales team is in the field and you want to transfer files to them, transfer files from their device to your server or perform an operation on the file in their device without disturbing them.
Fortunately, there’s a way to perform these actions.
Entgra IoT Server, with its EMM features, provides file transfer features to tackle similar kinds of scenarios.Admins can transfer files from an FTP server to a folder in the user’s device and vice versa using the file transfer feature. It is also possible to remotely access a device’s file system and perform file management tasks such as copy, rename, and delete files.
Here’s a short video that illustrates how simple remote and access is:
Using Devices in the Field
Click on the “connect to device” option on each device to start a remote session when using your devices in the field. This will display the device’s files on the screen. Select the option that allows you to select a server, where you can view all preconfigured FTP servers. Then simply click one of the servers, the server files will be fetched and shown on the screen. You can select any file and perform file transfer from local device to the FTP server or vice versa. This also comes with an option to rename and delete the local files in the device also.
The first blog of this series gives you a quick introduction to our remote screen sharing and control features. You can read the blog here. You can learn more about our IoT, EMM, and Mobile Device Management (MDM) technology here. We’re always happy to hear from you, so drop us an email on contact@entgra.io to start a conversation with us.