Tag: Mobile Device Management

G Suite has a new feature rolling out to the service’s Mobile Device Management functionality that allows for admins to configure specific Android apps on devices.  The feature gives admins the ability to pre-configure the apps that are available for Android devices in their domain.  Once that app is download, it is configured and ready to go for the end user.

The feature should cut down on configuration errors by end users.  Consider the example of a VPN where users are having to typing often lengthy and odd-for-them configuration information.  In this scenario, under this new feature, that could be configured before the user installs the app and be ready for them to use it almost instantly after it is installed.

G Suite is getting a small but time saving feature for admins who have corporate owned Android devices, or devices with a corporate work profile.  They will now be able to allow any app to be installed on those devices, saving the tedious work of having to whitelist apps one at a time.  It is a change that will be rolling out to all domains over the course of the new few weeks.

To this point, if a corporate owned or corporate work profile device needed to install an app beyond what the admin’s had whitelisted, they had to go and approve that app for that specific device.  As you can imagine, this can be time consuming if you have a lot of corporate devices.  Now admins can allow any app to be installed but, and this is important, end users will still only see the whitelisted apps in the corporate version of the Google Play Store first.  It is only when they search for an app that they will be able to find it and install it.