Exchange Activesync For Sharing Contact Lists

[Lessardrp]

Looking for an alternative to Carddav to push a shared contact list out to shared devices. We have several shared devices that no one will log into M365 on so sharing a contact list to a group of M365 users won't work. What if I set up a shared M365 account, created a standard contact list, created an Exchange Activesync profile in Jamf, and pushed it out to the shared devices as that shared M365 user? In Activesync settings I could deselect everything except contacts.

I could share that contact list from the shared account to the entire department so that everyone in the department had the shared contact list in Outlook when signed in to M365. And for the people with an assigned device and sign into M365 on that device, I could direct them to use the contact sync option in Outlook mobile to copy the shared contact list to the native IOS contacts app.

Then, I could delegate access to the shared account to designated people in the department so they can manage the shared contact list that gets synced.

Does that sound like it would work?

[AJPinto]

I think you are running in to a battle of philosophy. Apples concept of devices is generally 1:1, as is Microsofts O365 services. However you want a device to be 1:∞. As you suggested you could setup a shared exchange account, and use CardDav to sync it down as you suggested. You will not really get a more elegant solution.

Though, I suggest considering what is the benefit of doing this. People cant send emails, phone calls or anything like that from this device. They would need a second device, and at that point why not just sync the data to their second device. If your need is just informational, I suppose this would be perfect.

[Lessardrp]

I'm using Carddav now and it's problematic. I have to create a new profile every couple months because people start losing all of their contacts or random contacts within the list or it doesn't update and push out changes. It's unreliable and hence my search for an alternative.

These are shared phones that nobody logs into O365 on. They're first responder crews and the phone gets passed amongst them and from shift to shift. It's for making calls and sending texts and that's it. So the only thing they need is a shared contact list.

And just out of curiosity, why would they not be able to make a phone call from the device???