How well is the Mobile Device App Catalog working for you?

[cdenesha]

Hello,

I'm in K-12 education. I'm not sure if anyone outside of education has a need to check for apps 'Not in the App Catalog' or not.

For our younger grades, I would like to know if they install 'bad' apps. However, if the app is configured in Casper for the upper grades, then I cannot use that criteria for a Smart Group as the app is now.. in the App Catalog.

I'm trying to decide whether to submit a Feature Request suggesting that each device could have its own App Catalog based on what apps it is in scope for. Then if anything gets installed that is not in scope it will match the criteria of Not in App Catalog.

Thoughts?

I made the subject generic so please use it to discuss other topics that involve the App Catalog.

thank you!

chris

[cbrewer]

If the app is managed in your App Catalog and you check "Make app managed if currently installed as unmanaged" then this should sort itself out automatically. If the user downloads an app from the App Store that is in your App Catalog, the app will get converted to Managed. Once it's Managed, if it's not in Scope for that particular user the JSS will send an MDM command to remove that App from the device.

Option 2 is turn off the App Store and force users to use Self Service. Then if it's not scoped to them in the App Catalog, it won't be downloadable.

[cdenesha]

Thanks @cbrewer.

For the second option, I do have the App Store disabled for the younger grades. And if they are on iOS 9 I have disabled the trust for Enterprise Provisioning Profiles. However my environment is still using Self Service web clip which is totally broken for app updates, so until I can properly migrate to Self Service Mobile I need to occasionally open the App Store for updates. We are a GAFE site; recently Google broke sharing on the server side which necessitated new clients, and then immediately broke Classroom so I had to update clients again.

For the first option, since "Make app managed if currently installed as unmanaged" is part of the App configuration and the younger grades are not in that app's scope.. it is not an automatic process. I tried scoping them to the app and also excluding them in the hope that I would finally be able to black list apps, but the JSS is smart enough to know they are not supposed to have the app and so doesn't waste time processing it.

chris