1:1 Student Owned iPads - Email Setup

bthomason
New Contributor II

Just curious how those of you with 1:1 iPad programs, that enroll student owned devices, are setting up email for them. Specifically those of you who use GOOGLE APPS. Are you having them use Exchange with Apple Mail, or are you telling them to use the GMAIL App.

Are you making a Config Profile with Exchange, or are you having them set it up manually.

I like the GMAIL App, but they can't really sync calendars with it, so there is some separate setup if they want to use the calendar.

Just looking for a good workflow that has worked for you all.

Thanks

4 REPLIES 4

cdenesha
Valued Contributor II

We have an iPad 1:1 program, school owned. We use Google Apps for Education. The workflow I have seems pretty smooth.

When I assign the student's username to their device, it pulls in their email address from LDAP. I have a Configuration profile for Exchange ActiveSync with the scope being devices that have been assigned. The user is $USERNAME and the email address is $EMAIL. I also push a webclip to gmail as part of the same configuration profile, with the label being $USERNAME. They then know their username and can use the web interface to set up their account. When they go into Settings it prompts them for their password and they are configured for Mail/Calendars/Contacts. If they cancel the prompt, they can get reprompted by going into the mail settings and toggling Mail off and on again, waiting 4 seconds in between. For some reason I find this easier to explain than going right in and setting the password.

chris

Nick_Gooch
Contributor III

We deploy a config profile for Exchange as well. We don't have every students email in LDAP but their LDAP username is the same as the start of their email address. For the email address field we use $USERNAME@yourdomain and leave the password blank. We have it install automatically so after they enroll they get a prompt asking them to enter the password for their school email address. Nothing further is needed unless they have never logged into their account they would have to clear the captcha and agree to the terms first.

JayDuff
Contributor II

This thread is a little stale, but I have a similar question.

There is a Mail profile - is there a reason not to use that? If it can be used, what are the variables for the fields that we should use? I have the users in Active Directory, and the email is "mail" in AD.

If I still have to use Exchange, which gmail FQDN do I put into the Exchange ActiveSync Host field?

Thanks in advance!

JayDuff
Contributor II

@cdenesha answered my question in this thread.