When building an MDM, you look for a lot of workflows to make the lives of end users easier. One of those is Managed App Config, which is a technology from Apple that allows an MDM to inject information into an app when the app is sent to a device. Because all apps are different, it’s up to the application developer to build in support both for the feature itself, as well as for any variables they’d like to make possible for an MDM to send to an app. For example, an app might make server and username available, so that when a user opens the app, they need only provide their password. Or based on an Active Directory group, you might have a location within the app to direct a user to, a different server, or even a different schema for the username.
This is the simplest example, but there are hundreds of other things I wanted to do. And app vendors were actually very open to building these features. But they all asked “OK, so what do I do.” And the last thing I wanted to tell them was to use up some cockamamie naming convention that I made up off the top of my head. So, much smarter people than I have come up with all the conventions to help standardize this otherwise chaotic awesomeness. And they’ve created a website, with IBM, JAMF, MobileIron, and AirWatch as the founding members for, and published best practices. From the site:
A community focused on providing tools and best practices around native capabilities in mobile operating systems to enable a more consistent, open and simple way to configure and secure mobile apps in order to increase mobile adoption in business. Users benefit with instant mobile productivity and a seamless out-of-the box experience, and businesses benefit with secure work-ready apps with minimal setup required while leveraging existing investments in Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), VPN, and identity solutions. Ultimately, your apps are simpler to configure, secure and deploy.
To learn more about standardizing Managed App Config, check out the AppConfig Community Site.
This goes a long way in making one of the coolest features for MDM much, much more useable. Hope you enjoy!