Since the inception of Esper, we’ve excelled in creating innovative and ingenious solutions for difficult challenges Android devices face when used for dedicated enterprise use cases. While we continue to be industry leaders here, we’ve also made huge strides with managing dedicated iOS devices — because our customers asked for it and want to manage all of their devices from a single pane of glass. Lost Mode and managed config for iOS apps are the two most recent ways we’ve made it easier for customers to manage their iOS devices alongside their Android devices.

Lost Mode

Lost Mode — think Find My Phone for enterprises — has been one of our most requested features by customers with iOS devices. Lost Mode reduces device loss and minimizes hardware replacement costs. Depending on current loss rates, this has big potential in terms of ROI for you and your team. 

To try it out, find your iOS/iPadOS device in Devices & Groups, enable Lost Mode, and create your first custom message.

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Managed Config

In 2014, Google released what is now called Managed Configurations, an OS-level service that allows you to customize app behavior to meet corporate policy requirements. This was and continues to be an extreme improvement over the static config file approach to device policy management that IT professionals previously used. 

Benefits of Managed Config

• Centralize and remotely manage customizations at scale with your MDM
• No actual file to tamper with means enhanced security
• Code-driven file management enables dynamic modifications without losing consistency or scalability 

Back to why this matters for iOS…you can now use managed configs (note: lowercase) to modify an iOS app with Esper! Now, whether you are managing Android or iOS devices, or both, you can benefit from this modern approach.

Managed configs are set at the blueprint level, just like for Android apps. To apply a managed configuration, in the Apps & Configuration section of your blueprint, navigate to your app, select the Actions dots, and then choose Managed Configurations. Enter your keys and values in XML format, and select Apply Changes when you’re ready. Don’t forget to save, publish, and converge the blueprint for the changes to apply to your device(s)!

For example, you could use the following to set the homepage URL to esper.io on a compatible app such as the Managed View app:

<dict>

<key>URL</key>

<string>https://esper.io</string>

</dict>

There are a few notable differences to be aware of:

• For Android, managed config uses JSON; for iOS/iPadOS, managed config uses XML
• Apple has more restrictions than what you generally can do for Android apps — you will see this in the app’s documentation and managed configurations will only apply if they are supported by the app

While there are certainly fundamental differences between Android and iOS (and others), we’re committed to delivering a single pane of glass solution for customers to manage their dedicated devices with as seamless and efficient workflows as possible. We’re excited for you to start using Lost Mode and managed config for iOS applications. 

Want more? See what else you can do for your iOS devices with Esper!