Pushing out apps

Another important aspect of the dashboard is the ability to manage the applications on your devices.  From the Applications menu, you can view all apps linked from your VPP account and also search for individual applications in order to push these out to your devices.

If you have already linked in your VPP account to the dashboard this section should now have populated with the apps from your account.  (If this doesn’t apply to you, then the apps will need to be added one by one – please see here for info which refers to your specific operating system).

Each OS button links to the available apps – Android and iOS have the added functionality of enterprise apps.  This is where bespoke (Enterprise) apps can be added for deployment – the apps must be hosted and in a compatible format.  By adding an app here, we are then presented with the application settings screen which shows the compatible devices for the app. 

We have 2 sections – Auto Install and Self install.  Auto install pushes out to device automatically whereas Self install adds the application to the ‘My Catalogue’ section of the MG app.  Tags are used to assign the app accordingly. 

The most important slider here is the ‘Assign to Device' slider.  This means the licence is allocated to the device serial number and not an iTunes account.  If this is not selected, then the app will prompt the user for an iTunes account and will not install without this.

Content

Mobile Guardian also allows for books and media to be pushed out, this is achieved via the Content section.

Books can only be added via VPP and are installed in the same way as apps.

Media can push a Web URL, video or audio file to devices.  The video and audio files must be hosted on the network and can be cached on the device to reduce bandwidth consumption.  As with apps – these are assigned via tags.