Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) and Mobile App Management (MAM) SDKs come in all shapes and sizes. Not all EMM and MAM SDKs are built the same. And, the multitude of mobile apps organizations want to use inside EMM and MAM likewise contain different methods, features, and protocols, some of which conflict with EMM and MAM SDKs.
This Knowledge Base article describes how to use the Appdome Mobility Suite to customize and extend EMM and MAM SDKs to reach more mobile apps. The goal of this knowledge base is to help you make EMM and MAM implementations more agile and flexible, bridge gaps, and extend the broadest EMM and MAM functionality to more apps and use cases.
We hope you find this knowledge base useful and enjoy using Appdome!
About Customizing and Extending EMM and MAM SDK Implementations
Appdome is a mobile integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that allows users to add a wide variety of features, SDKs & APIs to Android and iOS apps. Using a simple ‘click to add’ user interface, Appdome allows anyone to easily integrate any EMM or MAM SDK to any mobile app – instantly, no code or coding required.
Using Appdome, there are no development or coding prerequisites. For example, there is no Appdome SDK, libraries, or plug-ins to implement. Likewise, there are no changes required inside the app. Appdome is compatible with mobile apps built in any development environment including Native Android and iOS apps, hybrid apps and non-native apps built in Xamarin, Cordova, and React Native, Ionic and more. The Appdome technology adds any EMM and MAM SDK, as well as the relevant standards, frameworks, extensions and more to the app automatically. No manual development work is required. Using Appdome, mobile apps will include the EMM or MAM SDK and all the Appdome Mobility Suite features as if everything was natively coded to the app.
The Appdome Mobility Suite is perfect for organizations that need or want to achieve a unified enterprise mobility experience for all users and all apps. Organizations often need to complement and extend EMM and MAM SDK to reach apps not supported by EMM vendors, adjust container policies, create Intelligent VPN Tunneling, extend Root/Jailbreak protection and more. In addition, organizations often need a greater range of mobile permission controls to customize the mobility experience for their users, ensure compliance and segregate work and personal use-cases on BYOD devices.
Prerequisites for using Appdome Mobility Suite
In order to use all of the features in Appdome Mobility Suite you’ll need:
- Appdome account – IDEAL or Higher
- Mobile App – Android (.apk) or iOS (.ipa)
- An EMM environment:
- Signing Credentials (e.g., signing certificates and provisioning profile)
How to Customize and Extend EMM and MAM SDK Implementations
Follow these step-by-step instructions to use Appdome Mobility Suite to customize and extend EMM and MAM SDK implementations:
Upload a Mobile App to Your Account
Please follow these steps to add a mobile app to your Appdome account.
If you don’t have an Appdome account, click here to create an account.
From the “Fuse” tab, Select Appdome Mobility Suite Features
Select the Fuse Tab. Note: a blue underline will appear showing the step is active.
Beneath the Fuse Tab, select Management. Note: a blue highlight will appear showing the category is active.
- Enable or toggle “ON” the EMM Services to open the EMM provider list.
- Choose your desired EMM or MAM SDK vendor
- Open Appdome Mobility Suite
- Select the specific customization and extensions needed in your app.
Appdome Mobility Suite features
The Appdome Mobility Suite organizes the options to customize and extend EMM and MAM SDK implementations into easy to find sections. These capabilities would ordinarily need to be developed and coded into an app. With Appdome, adding these capabilities to mobile apps is completed in seconds.
- Dynamic Container ManagementTM – This is an EMM or MAM container optimization feature that ensures mobile app performance is not impacted by EMM and MAM SDKs. This feature leverages Appdome’s proprietary Dynamic Container Management methods and provides users with an easy way to configure Data at Rest Encryption, Folder Management, and File and Folder name obfuscation, and Nested Filesystems.
- EMM Tunneling – Appdome Mobility Suite allows organizations to control and customize the EMM VPN or Tunnel used inside the mobile apps by telling Appdome how to implement the EMM or MAM SDK.
- Adaptive App Routing – Select the Routing Schemes to use with your app, including support for VoIP, exclusions, whitelist URLs and other settings.
- Appdome PreAuth and EMM Authenticated Tunnel – Apply EMM authentication (via EMM supported methods such as Kerberos, KCD and Certificates) to mobile apps and use EMM authentication schemes for tunneled traffic.
- Custom EMM Policies and Populate Settings in AppConfig- With these options enabled you can populate your Fused app’s preferences using an EMM configuration payload. Custom EMM Policies allow you to apply AppConfig settings to an app on managed or BYOD devices. It will convert the settings from an EMM for the configuration settings to AppConfig format that the app can read.
- WebView Consolidation – Seamlessly apply EMM tunneling and policies to off-process WebView components.
- Copy/Paste Protection by Appdome – Copy/Paste Protection by Appdome allows organizations to prevent sensitive data to be pasted to/from an app.
- Copy/Paste Protection Prevention by Appdome – Prevent application data from being copied and pasted outside of a trusted application. Copied text will be encrypted.
- Prohibit External Pasting – Fused Apps will not accept pasted data from non-Fused apps
- Root/Jailbreak Prevention by Appdome– Allows customers to leverage side-by-side jailbreak and root detection from Appdome, together with the jailbreak and root detection from their chosen EMM vendor. Block users attempting to run the application on a Rooted/jailbroken device.
- Blur Application Screen by Appdome – On iOS apps, blurs application preview screen when it is minimized to prevent sensitive data from being visible outside the app.
- Prevent App Screen Sharing by Appdome – On Android apps, prevents taking screenshots, mirroring and sharing application’s screen, and hides application’s preview thumbnails when minimized.
- App Layouts and entitlements modification – modify the app to accommodate the EMM’s added views, entitlements, access groups etc.
- Universal App Layouts – Automatically reconcile layout elements such as Splash screens.
- Grouped Containers – Enable using iOS built-in shared access groups and containers based on app’s entitlements.
- Legacy Background/Push – provides pre-iOS 10 VoIP optimization, modify iOS apps to support Push notifications when the app is in Background.
- Mobile Permission Control – Mobile Permission Control is a growing set of features providing organizations granular control over the mobile permissions allowed to specific mobile apps. Mobile Permission Controls are above and beyond the policies and restrictions available via the EMM or MAM SDK. Examples of new mobile permission controls include:
- Prohibit Local Contacts – Prevents users from importing local contacts to the app
- Prohibit Local Calendar – Prevents importing local calendar to the app
- In-App Calls Only – Ensures all calls are made using the apps native dialer when applicable. This prevents the app from displaying alternate phone apps when a phone number is clicked within the app.
- In-App Messages Only – This option ensures all message are made using the app’s native messaging service, when applicable. This prevents the app from displaying alternate messaging apps when a contact is clicked within the app.
Click “Fuse My App”
The technology behind Fuse My App has two major elements – (1) a microservice architecture filled with 1000s of code sets needed for mobile integrations, and (2) an adaptive code generation engine that can recognize the development environment, frameworks and methods in each app and match the app to the relevant code-sets needed to integrate the EMM or MAM SDK and the various Appdome Mobility Suite features to the mobile app in seconds.
Congratulations! When your implementation is complete, you’ll receive the notice below. You now have a mobile app fully integrated with your EMM or MAM SDK of choice plus the Appdome Mobility Suite features.
What to do After I Fuse My App?
After you successfully Fused an app, you need to sign the app in order to deploy it. You can also brand or customize a Fused app on Appdome.
Add Context™ to the Appdome-Fused App
Appdome is a full-featured mobile integration platform. Within Context™, Appdome users can brand the app, including adding a favicon to denote the new service added to the app.
For more information on the range of options available in Context™, please read this knowledge base article
If you’d like to add private server certificates, CAs, and/or server public certificate files you can add these here under Private Server Certificates and Authorities in App Set-Up.
Sign the Appdome-Fused App (Required)
In order to deploy an Appdome-Fused app, it must be signed. Signing iOS apps and signing Android apps are easy using Appdome. Alternatively, you can use Private Signing, download your unsigned app and sign locally using your own signing methods.
Deploy the Appdome-Fused App to a Mobile Device
Once you have signed your Appdome-Fused app, you can download to deploy it using your distribution method of choice. For more information on deploying your Appdome-Fused apps, please read this knowledge base.
That is it – Enjoy your Appdome Fused app!
How Do I Learn More?
Check out Appdome Mobility Suite for enterprise blog or request a demo at any time.
If you have any questions, please send them our way at support@appdome.com or via the chat window on the Appdome platform.
Thank you!
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Thomas Libby