Below youâll find a number of frequently asked questions I receive related to Android Enterprise.
No, these devices are not officially supported for Android Enterprise and therefore would be expected to be managed using the legacy and mostly deprecated Device Admin APIs. These devices may also be referred to as AOSP, and an excellent example of an uncertified, AOSP device is the Kindle Fire.
Unofficially without GMS certification modern Android devices do allow for limited Android Enterprise management with an EMM that supports closed network or non-GMS management, but your mileage may vary.
Yes. Since Android 5.x (Lollipop), like all other OEMs, it has been possible to deploy for free a work profile or provision a fully managed device using Samsung devices and a preferred EMM solution. From Android 8.0 and Knox 3.0, Samsung further integrated AE by having the Knox Workspace container use the Android Enterprise Profile Owner APIs to inflate the Workspace, and as of late 2020 also began supporting zero-touch in addition to their existing KME service. Customers can optionally select to activate a Knox Platform for Enterprise license to enable premium features on the device, including all of the APIs from the previously separate Knox Standard, Knox Custom and Knox Premium SDKs.
No. Unless you are already a G Suite customer, you can use your EMM console to register a new Android Enterprise organisation with any existing Google account and your EMM will create unique and generic managed Google Play service accounts on each Android device that allow you to sign into the Google Play Store and receive configs & policies. These accounts are silently added to the device. You do not need to configure your domain, create users, or manage the authentication to services like Active Directory.
This question comes up often and isnât always simple to answer.
Organisations ideally need to understand the use case for the devices to be selected. This could be normal knowledge worker devices for employees needing a corporate phone, something tough (doesnât need to be rugged) to withstand harsher environments, or something bespoke such as a kiosk on a reception desk used for checking in or something with an integrated printer/scanner.
After this, the minimum OS required for what the organisation wants to do, for example setting a passcode on a work profile (a challenge) requires Android 7.0, ensuring that passcode cannot be the same as the device passcode requires 9.0. More of these comparisons are made in considerations when migrating from device administrator to Android Enterprise.
Once determined, the best place to start looking is the Android Enterprise Recommended list. If nothing suits requirements, get in touch and Iâll try to help out!
While itâs indeed true Android Enterprise was introduced as Android for Work with Lollipop (and supported even earlier with the app (but we donât talk about that), Android Enterprise was an opt-in feature with little uptake and a lot of teething issues. From Android Marshmallow (6.0) it became a mandatory requirement.
In other words, Marshmallow is chosen as a reasonably reliable reference point for when Android Enterprise was guaranteed to be widely supported. There will be OEMs that can confidently state they supported it from Day Zero, however few did.
For an in-depth take on this, check out:
In a nutshell, device admin was introduced with Android 2.2 as a means of granting admin permissions to applications. Any number of admins can sit on a device and have excessive, often unnecessary control. It has been widely abused by PHAs (malware, etc) and is very limited in scope of capability, leaving each OEM to build upon it in a fragmented and difficult to support manner.
Android Enterprise takes a more sane approach to device administration by permitting only one owner on a device at a time with scope for task delegation to other apps as defined by the management server, this approach is fundamentally more secure and easier to support as the APIs are universal cross-OEM.
Add in features such as no Google account management, silent app distribution, managed system updates, simple provisioning and streamlined enrolment, and itâs easy to understand why Android Enterprise is basically better in every way.
No. An Android Enterprise bind is undertaken with only one EMM at a time. Under all normal circumstances attempting to bind with the same Google account on another EMM will return an error stating an Enterprise already exists.
It is possible to unbind from one EMM and then bind with another, however this will delete the existing Enterprise and create a brand new one, losing all approved applications, etc.
The only exception to the above is in high availability and/or disaster recovery scenarios where an instance of an EMM may be replicated, but no two EMMs should be generating managed Google Play accounts from the same Google account simultaneously.
AER is Googleâs validation programme for devices, EMMs, Carriers and MSPs.
Each of the above will have a list of requirements to meet in order to validate, and will re-validate on an annual basis.
More details: What is Android Enterprise Recommended?
Iâve encountered several examples of things not working quite right with AER devices, particularly when diving into the granularity of a specific function with a specific EMM.
The first point of contact for any device based issue would be the EMM vendor. While it may not be an issue which can be replicated on a different model or OEM, the EMM vendor will still investigate it, particularly if it can be replicated on one or more devices of the same model.
Before contacting the EMM, the organisation should ensure the issue can be replicated on more than one device. If so, attempt to collect logs from the EMM, the device (a bug report, though be aware this will collect personal account information also) and steps to replicate it along with all of the normal details â make, model, Android version, build number, etc. A video is always appreciated though do add the steps on paper also.
If the EMM can replicate it but cannot resolve it, they will have OEM contacts to reach out to to progress it. If necessary, Google will be involved once all other avenues are exhausted, or itâs determined to be a platform issue.
I do a fair amount of device testing, so if you do come across something and your EMM is not providing the support needed, feel free to reach out and Iâll be happy to help.
Android One and Android Enterprise Recommended are two different programmes offering a bit of overlap in security and consistency.
Android Enterprise Recommended ensures devices validated meet the minimum requirements and recommendations of a consistent UX for management, 90 day security updates for 3 years and at least one letter upgrade (O to P, P to Q.. ). OEMs maintain their value-adds, bundled apps, custom UIs and more.
Android One takes this a step further; any device in the Android One programme will use a system image developed with Google. Like the Nexus days of old, the UI is vanilla Android and the Android One team have to approve any additional applications bundled with the device.
Updates must be released every 30 days and the devices must support two letter upgrades (O to Q, P to R, etc).
When combined with AER, Android One offers additional benefits validated to work in the enterprise. Itâs a great combination.
Wherever possible, zero-touch offers the best experience both for organisations and users. For organisations, it provides not only the decreased overhead of not having to explain how to manually start provisioning a device (and the support required when users still donât get it), but also the confidence of knowing should a device be factory reset accidentally or with intent, the device will jump back into zero-touch provisioning as soon as itâs connected to a network. This extends to Samsungâs KME equally for the same reasons. That doesnât mean zero-touch is the fastest and most efficient provisioning method, in fact itâs probably comparable in speed to DPC identifier, however speed is but one consideration.
If zero-touch isnât available, my personal preference is QR code provisioning as QR codes are persistent (normally), can be hosted anywhere or freely shared between employees, donât need a dedicated provisioning device, and support DPC extras.
Adding accounts allows end-users to head into Settings > Accounts and add an account.
Configure credentials allows an end-user to configure account credentials in-app.
Both options have legitimate uses, for example the adding of accounts and configuring of credentials may be permitted in a COPE deployment as end-users would be allowed to add a Google account and download their own applications complete with personal accounts.
On the other hand, enabling add accounts in a fully managed or work profile deployment scenario would allow end-users to switch to their personal Google account within Google Play, providing full access to the Play Store from which they may install applications which encourage data leakage and raise DLP concerns (Dropbox sat alongside OneDrive, for example).
Yes this is possible, however not concurrently. Android supports only profile-wide VPN (or always-on VPN) natively, and the per-app VPN functionality often alluded to when multiple VPNs are brought up would have to be supported in-app.
When one VPN is running profile-wide and another is initiated, it will disconnect the first. Should these VPNs have failure protection and automatic reconnect (or leverage always-on VPN for this) the two VPN solutions will repeatedly disconnect one another.
No. Iâd recommend taking a look at Hypergate.
There is however a project which was initiated (but not wholly supported) by Google to bring Kerberos support to Android through an application. Take a look at the respective Github repo to learn more.
Related: Setup Kerberos Authentication on MobileIron Core for Android Enterprise
The account type chosen can have a significant impact on enrolment if not done so correctly.
User based accounts are tied to an EMM user and will be used across all devices enrolled by said user.
Device based accounts are created per-device irrespective of the user the device enrols under.
In either scenario, that standard limitation of 10 devices per Google account applies, therefore if using one EMM user account to enrol many devices â a common staging exercise â it is imperative device based accounts are selected.
How these account types are changed is EMM specific, so do reach out to your EMM vendor for instructions.
No. User applications and app data residing outside of the work profile are not visible to the DPC within a work profile. System applications are, however once again the data associated with the apps is separately stored, meaning personal account details associated with Gmail would not show up alongside a corporate exchange account within the EMM.
There have been isolated instances where during enrolment the DPC could collect a list of personal applications installed before migrating into the work profile, however by the time enrolment completes this will have been rectified to display only the applications in the work profile.
As of Android 11 this answer also applies to COPE, work profiles on company owned devices.
No. It is not possible to deploy applications into the parent profile (or, the device outside of the work profile) in a work profile deployment. This is covered, as well as other aspects of this use case, with considerations when deploying MTD with Android Enterprise
As of Android 11 this answer also applies to COPE, work profiles on company owned devices.
Yes, however this process needs to be supported by the EMM. Few EMMs support this today, so itâs important to ask your vendor (or prospective vendor) if this is something youâd like to do.
The process itself will vary, but it may range from a checkbox in a profile to assigning a specific configuration, or simply a change at the folder/org/group level settings the devices sit within.
Once the process begins, affected devices will be prompted by the DPC to begin work profile setup. In this process the DPC will migrate from the parent profile (device) to a work profile. Understandably many legacy profiles/configs/policies will cease to function and so equivalent Android Enterprise policies should be in place.
The work challenge is essentially a secondary passcode to access the work profile. In legacy management this would effectively be a container passcode, and is in essence the same thing.
There are a few options available:
Reboot the device and re-enrol as sometimes all it takes is a reboot, and the EMM will prompt itâs deletion as it provisions the profile once again.
Manually delete the work profile by heading to Settings > Accounts. The work profile will be listed and should be removable here.
Connect the device to ADB if the profile still wonât delete. This requires enabling ADB debugging on the device via Developer options and a working ADB setup on a computer. A Google search will assist in getting this setup if necessary. Once the computer can detect the device over ADB, run the following:
adb shell pm list users
This should return a list of active users where user 0 is the parent (device/default) user, and any other number (10, 13, 200 etc) is the work profile. To remove the work profile run:
adb shell pm remove-user 13
Making sure of course the number reflects the returned value in the previous command.
This should remove the work profile.
There are several options for provisioning into any fully managed deployment scenario (COBO, COPE, COSU):
More details:
No, both an enterprise wipe/retire/delete from the EMM and a full wipe on a fully managed device do the same thing, they reset the device back to factory settings.
Android Enterprise requires a DPC actively enrolled to provide management policies, without this, the device will reset.
Normally this would suggest either the respective Android Enterprise configurations arenât assigned to the device, or thereâs an issue with the binding between the EMM and Google.
Ensure the user of the device is in the correct Active Directory group (if relevant) or EMM group to receive the correct profiles, otherwise check the binding.
Not normally by default, though do validate with your EMM vendor. If confirmed disabled however FRP kicks in after a reset, log a ticket with EMM support.
If so desired, whitelisted Factory Reset Protection is available and offers a simple, albeit caveated means of ensuring devices canât simply be wiped and re-setup without Android Enterprise provisioning taking place. For zero-touch devices thereâs no need to leverage it.
More: Feature spotlight: Factory Reset Protection.
Yes, however EMM support on both EMM solutions is required, and Iâm not aware of any today who support this except for the Android Management API.
For details on th changes to COPE in Android 11, please read Android 11 COPE changes.
Yes.
As of 2020, Intune supports work profiles on fully managed devices from Android 8.0. This is because Googleâs Android Management API introduced support for the deployment scenario (albeit silently, intentionally avoiding stating as such in itâs wider Android 11 COPE announcement).
Android 8-10 â Yes. This is because the DPC sits both in and outside of the work profile normally, and the DPC will collect an app inventory surrounding it. Organisations can opt to disable this within the EMM under a privacy policy, and EMMs may even disable it by default, however do consider there is a privacy consideration when installing personal applications.
Android 11+ â No, this is because in Android 11, work profiles on fully managed devices was deprecated in favour or work profiles on company owned devices. This new deployment scenario aligns the privacy aspect with that of a work profile deployment, because it sort-of is one.
Android 8-10 â Yes, for work profiles on fully managed devices, however this would need to be supported by the EMM. VMware Workspace One UEM can do this for example by uploading an APK to the console, though there are no current examples of EMMs being able to push Google Play applications to both profiles.
Android 11+ â No, this is not supported for work profiles on company owned devices.
Yes, however this requires EMM support. I am not aware of any EMM that supports this today, despite itâs incredible value particularly to early Android Enterprise adopters.
Where the EMM does not support this, or the device runs Android 11, the organisation would need to retire and reprovision the device.
Android 8-10 â My normal advice, where supported through DPC extras (so NFC, QR, zero-touch, but not DPC identifier), is to enable system applications on COPE devices.
Organisations are providing a device provisioned for personal use, and as such the closer to stock it feels, the more familiar users will be with using it.
Most EMMs support the ad-hoc management of system applications, so thereâs no reason bloatware canât still be disabled, but things like system gallery, calculator, health apps and other OEM app suites being enabled should be harmless outside of the secure work profile.
Android 11+ â While there is still application management to a degree, the act of enabling or disabling system applications during provisioning is no longer supported.
As of late 2020, all GMS certified Android 9.0+ devices from all OEMs support zero-touch.
OEMs supporting zero-touch on 8.0/8.1 include:
Along with the change to globally support all Android 9.0+ GMS certified devices with the integration of zero-touch into GMS Core (Google Play Services), the previous Google-maintained list of zero-touch supported devices, including those running older Android versions, is no longer live.
Zero-touch resellers can be found include globally. The complete list of resellers can be found here.
No, it is a free service, from Google at least. Reseller partners can choose to charge for this service, or bundle it as part of other offerings if they choose to do so.
Should you be unhappy with a reseller charging for the service, have a look for another reseller who does not.
Yes. Zero-touch is just a provisioning method which deploys an EMM agent to your device over the air (OTA), to enrol into a Fully Managed Device profile using Android Enterprise (not legacy Device Admin) APIs. Google do not provide a free EMM solution, though device management is available through Google Workspace (G Suite) with the appropriate licenses.
Nothing until after the device is reset.
The config wonât apply until after the device is reset. Anything after the âchecking for updatesâ prompt is too late.
Nothing until the device is reset, at which point it will not be prompted to enrol into management.
Nothing until the device is reset, at which point the new config will apply.
The device will allow normal setup, however once connected to a network will prompt the user to reset, or will reset automatically after an hour.
It will be forced to enrol back into management automatically following the data erase, unless a config has not been applied, or has since been removed.
This action results in the device being irreversibly removed from zero-touch management. Please contact the device reseller to add it back in. The IMEI or serial (WiFi only devices) will be required.
No, please use an EMM solution for day-to-day device management.
No, it does this extremely quickly.
Fully managed (including COSU), work profiles on fully managed devices (8.0-10), and work profiles on company owned devices (Android 11)
The term âzero-touchâ is aimed at admins and IT teams that no longer need to manually touch each device in order to undertake managed provisioning. This is in context of IT teams often pre-staging devices before shipping them to end users to avoid non-enrolment, which is no longer needed when devices are zero-touch registered.
It does not apply to the act of end-users running through the provisioning process, which has admittedly required more and more taps over the last few major Android versions due in part to the often unnecessary interruptions of unskippable privacy prompts.
No, only authorised resellers. Customers are not able to add devices to the zero-touch portal at this time.
A reseller has the ability to upload any devices, however it is their obligation to ensure that the device identifiers (IMEI or serial) are correct and that the organisation in question owns the devices, not another organisation or an employee. If the organisation does own these devices, can prove this, and can supply accurate device identifiers, please discuss this with a preferred reseller for assistance. It is up to the reseller if they wish to upload devices already purchased since there are consequences for resellers who upload incorrect data to the zero-touch portal.
Only console admins or owners from the customer portal, or the reseller. End-users cannot remove their device from zero-touch enrolment.
As of late 2020 yes!
As zero-touch is a little light on features, Knox Mobile Enrolment has full support for Android Enterprise and a little more control over the how and when for device provisioning, so organisations may still opt not to use zero-touch on a Samsung device.
Through supported EMMs and the minimum Knox version (2.9), organisations can use either KME or zero-touch (9.0+) to deploy an Android Enterprise fully managed, dedicated, or COPE device, or work profile via KME only.
Yes, however this only affects new devices added and not those already on the console. For existing devices, leverage either CSV or API to make bulk changes.
Yes, via the CSV template provided, or the customer API
Yes, either by requesting a new account from a new reseller, or adding a new reseller through the existing console.
No. While zero-touch is mandatory for Android Enterprise Recommended, devices that donât meet Googleâs requirements for storage or spec can and still do support provisioning via zero-touch.
These are a selection of DPC-specific key-pairs which manipulate the enrolment experience. An example may be pre-populating the EMM server, or enabling system applications. They vary between EMMs so do validate before attempting to use one.
A collection of DPC extras for various EMM/UEM vendors can be found here: Android Enterprise zero-touch DPC extras collection.
As EMM vendors begin supporting the zero-touch iFrame introduced in late 2020, manual editing of DPC extras should diminish as EMMs will handle it automatically.
The upload may complete successfully, but the device will not initiate the zero-touch enrolment flow once connected to a network. The device will need to be deregistered and re-registered with the correct manufacturer.
This could be a few things:
As of late 2020, all Android Go devices support zero-touch through expanded zero-touch availability. Prior to this, Android Go supported zero-touch on an opt-in basis. Validate support ahead of bulk purchase.
No, zero-touch is for corporate-owned devices only.
For all EMMs that support it, the Google Play iFrame now supports the simple, few-step process of uploading an APK for distribution to your Enterprise.
Unlike adding an APK directly into the UEM console, uploading to Google Play is safer, easier to manage and less likely to lead to issues compared with pushing APKs directly.
More information: Create and manage private apps for Android Enterprise
Where the Play iFrame isnât supported, itâs possible to upload and distribute through the Google Play Console but keep in mind thereâs a $25 fee to set up a developer account.
No. App shortcuts supported with device admin are not available for Android Enterprise. Instead, itâs possible to deploy shortcuts for Android Enterprise devices as web applications through the Google Play iFrame.
Instead of a bookmark/shortcut that opens in the default browser, web apps are legitimate applications that open with Google Chrome.
More information: Create and manage web apps for Android Enterprise
When deploying the iFrame, a UEM vendor decides what they wish to support. On that basis, the iFrame may lack private app upload, web app creation or bundle support.
Itâs possible for a UEM to implement multiple iFrames with these features separated out, so is worth checking this functionality isnât placed elsewhere on the console.
Should additional features not be available anywhere, please get in touch with your UEM provider to discuss this.
Need something else answered? Comment below, tweet @jasonbayton or tag me in a LinkedIn post. Questions may be republished on this document, or form the basis of a new document under /android.