Deploy and Configure FileMaker Mobile Custom Apps Using MDM

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is Apple software that allows a user to manage medium to large numbers of iPhone and iPads.  The workgroups range in size from just a handful for a classroom to deploying apps to thousands of users across the world.

John Miller and Nick Amundsen of JAMF software are experts with MDM, and spoke at DevCon 2016 on how to specifically deploy and configure FileMaker mobile custom apps using MDM:

Mobile custom apps offer the best opportunity for developers and IT leaders to transform the organizations they serve. Apple provides the best ecosystem for these custom apps, providing coordinated hardware, software, and services that benefit users, developers, and IT managers.

Arming yourself with the knowledge of how mobile device and app deployment works within the Apple ecosystem puts you ahead of the crowd. In this presentation, Nick Amundsen and John Miller from JAMF Software will show how mobile device management (MDM) is used to deploy, configure, and secure mobile custom apps.

Here’s some of what you will learn in this video:

Five industries that are moving more towards mobile solutions:

• Apple Retail Centers
  • Replacing cash registers with an iPhone sized device
• Epic – Healthcare software
  • Allows patients to see their charts
  • Allows people to use an Apple TV box to hook up to their accounts
  • Changing the bedside experience for patients
• VIA – A competitor to UBER in New York
  • They focus on getting information to their drivers
  • They use MDM to update apps on remote iPads
• eSpark – Education
  • Provide personalized learning for students by providing a special app that deploys new apps as needed as they move through the curriculum
• Microsoft Office – for teams.
  • They use iPad Pro’s to replace laptops using Office 365

And, of course, some tech stuff

MDM is the tool to use to work with devices, Apps, and Users:

• Provision and deploy devices
• Configure device settings
• Deploy, configure and update apps (even is auto update is turned off)
• Allow users to self service

Apple Deployment Technologies

• Push technologies
  • Push Apps
  • Configure settings
• Send Messages
  • News Updates
  • General IT Updates

How does this work in practice?  If you lose your iPad, for example, it can be shut down with a message (say a phone number) remotely.  It just can’t be used until unlocked by IT.  Nice.

Device Enrollment Program

Speeds up the process of getting a device configured quickly right out of the box, with exactly the programs and setup needed for your clients:

1. Open box
2. Power on iPad
3. There is no step three

This applies to an iPad straight out of the box with the wrapper still on it!  Impressive.

Deployment Methods

• In-House Enterprise App
• B2B App Store
• App Store

There’s more.  Lots more…

There is plenty of useful information in this video about how to deal with a high volume of devices from delivery to end of life.  If you are fighting this battle, check this out.

We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try.

Tom Clancy (1947 – )