Do you work in an office where it is mostly Apple iDevices for essentially every man and his dog?
If so, then you would know managing these devices and ensuring they are consistently setup between device to device can be tiring as there is no centralized solution much like the Blackberry Enterprise Services (BES). There isn’t exactly a centralized tool which you can distribute policies over the air to these devices like Apple iPhones, or iPads, but there is a tool called iPhone Configuration Utility.
The name, Apple iPhone Configuration Utility is misleading to say the least, the tool does support iPads as well. You can find out more about the tool itself from Apple’s product page here
I’ve been using this tool for past 3-4 months now at my workplace, and while I mentioned above it is no substitute for centralized policies management system for iPhones and iPads, it does allow you keep certain basic settings like wireless connections, APN settings and VPN configurations consistent amongst the iPhones and iPads and this can only be done when the iDevice is plugged in via USB.
Once you’ve downloaded the tool and opened it, the interface does provide a similar view to what you would be used to in iTunes 10 (iTunes 11 just recently had a major user interface overhaul) and earlier versions. The concept is fairly straight forward, you create a configuration profile with the standard settings you wish to add and then apply that configuration profile to each iDevice you plug in via USB.
Creating a Configuration Profile
On left hand side under Library, click on Configuration Profiles and then click on New button
Give this profile a name and fill in any other necessary information as needed to identify the profile more clearly. You can also set the security for this profile to either allow end users to remove profile or only with Authentication code you set or never (with this option being more favorable in a corporate environment)
Once we’re done let’s move onto the other sections of this Configuration Profile, you can choose from a wide range of sections. Let’s just use Web Clips as an example, click on Web Clips – Give the WebClip a name e.g. Standard WebClip, give the WebClip a URL e.g. Google.com.au and choose an image to represent for the icon.
As with good old Apple fashion, there is no save button as all information and configuration we’ve just added are automatically saved.
Adding the Configuration to an iDevice
Plugin your iDevice, and this should appear under Devices on the left hand side.
Click on Configuration Profile Tab on the right hand side and you should now see the list of Configuration Profiles we created earlier. Click on Install.
How This Looks on iPad
Once you’ve hit the Install button as described above, on your iDevice, a screen will show similar to the this:
Once the Configuration Profile has been installed, you will see this profile listed under Settings – General – Profile on your iDevice
And finally what this Configuration Profile has configured and installed on the iDevice, looks like. In this case a quick shortcut pointing to www.google.com.au was added to the home screen like so:
Overview
You can see, how useful this tool can be, even though the example given above in creating a WebClip might not be very useful, but the fact that these configurations can predefined and then at the click of an install button you can add these settings quickly and efficiently.
Get the iPhone Configuration Utility
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The post Apple iPhone Configuration Utility: How-To appeared first on Just Kevin.