I have been struggling with the requirement to populate the domain field in the Exchange ActiveSync configuration profile. Because we use Google and have no way to pass first.last to the User field, this completely breaks our ability to configure email in a profile. Despite the documentation that states that you can leave Domain and User fields empty in the profile to prompt the user to enter that data, it simply does't work… JAMF has recognized the defect and I understand a fix is in 9.22. However, I have a large number of iPads to roll out before 9.22 ships.
Here is my workaround.
Enter a variable in the domain field that will return a null value. It has to have an entry, but it doesn't have to be valid. Rather than use an existing variable that could return a value, I created a mobile device extension attribute (LDAP) that would certainly return a null value (I had it looking for the NULL attribute in LDAP-it obviously doesn't exist. You could use Santa, it doesn't matter as long as it won't return any value). That extension attribute ($EXTENSIONATTRIBUTE_<#>) is populated in the domain entry in my configuration profile. I then use the $EMAIL to populate the User field and it works like a charm. Page 390 in the Caper Suite Admin Guide 9.2 has more information on creating mobile device extension attributes. It is incredibly simple. I had zero experience with it and it took me a couple of minutes to make one.
The good thing about this workaround, besides it working, is that when JAMF fixes the issue, I can simply delete the extension attribute and nothing will still be passed to the Domain field, causing absolutely no disruption of client email at that time.
I would love to take full credit for this fix, but I was working with JAMF support trying to find a way to exploit mobile device extension attributes to accomplish this when the support specialist came up with the idea of simply passing a null value to that field to make it work. They get most of the credit.
