Mobile Device Profile for Gmail

[stlukesgrammar]

Hi all.

Has anyone been able to set up a mobileconfig profile to automatically set up a gmail account?

We use Google Apps, and want to be able to provide a 1-touch setup through self-service to import all details into the built-in mail settings.

--Nathan

[notoole]

This would be very helpful in my organization as well. Google hosts our email.

[stlukesgrammar · Accepted solution]

Hi there.

I kind of forgot about this post, but a very helpful admin from another school actually called and gave me a couple of hints for capser - as he's been using in for a while. He pointed out that Google actually run an exchange-like sync functionality. That way, we can push out an Exchange Active-sync profile to our iPads, and it works like an exchange account.

The info can be found at http://support.google.com/a/users/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

Essentially, set the server address as m.google.com
set the username as the full email address
set the domain as the email domain (everything after the @ symbol).

Then, once they've installed the profile, they put in their google password and away they go, easy!

Hope that helps!

[cdenesha]

I used this successfully in my iPad rollout last week.

I did all the things mentioned in the post by stlukesgrammar.

I also utilized a variable in User - $USERNAME
also a variable in Email Address - $EMAIL

I sent a webclip with the URL to log into Google Apps that as a Label used the variable $USERNAME. This way they would know their short username as many did not remember or were not told yet.

So during deployment I had them sign into Gmail with the webclip and create their account. Then they could tap on Mail and put their password in.

It worked quite well. Some users who cancelled the password entry for Mail got an error so we had to go in and toggle Mail off and back on again.

chris

[stlukesgrammar]

Hi Chris.

That's exactly the way to go - I probably should have mentioned to use the variables in my earlier post... :-)
One small thing we found with this method (exchange-like email setup) is that, if the user changes their password, they often have problems getting their iPads to accept the new password. The exact symptoms are that they would get a popup indicating that their old password didn't work and to enter a new password. However, even after they enter it correctly, the popup appears again. We saw this a lot with iOS 4-6, and I haven't confirmed yet if it is still an issue in iOS 7.
Long story short, the password would need to be updated by actually going into the mail account settings and changing the password there. Not a massive thing, but something to keep an eye out for anyway.

Cheers,
--Nathan

[mahughe]

So, I have this working on a percentage of devices that this is deployed to...I don't believe it's prompting a password however even on the working ones.

Doing more testing, the issue seems to be the mail app isn't able to connect to the server and not validating the account...

Thoughts?

[gokoudes]

Just an FYI for anyone using Exchange Activesync profiles for Gmail -- the only way we've gotten the profile to work is by:

• enabling 2-step verification for the account(s) in question
• creating an app-specific password in the account, name it whatever - i.e. "exchange"
• When prompted, or if deploying profile with password, use the app-specific password generated above

Otherwise, use the now built-in Google Account config profile payload.

Cheers!

[shrisivakumaran]

Is it possible to manage Google apps (Gmail, Gdrive, google docs and third party apps like (Slack, Jira, zendesk) via Jamf for iOS device? Need to block file sharing and copying content as well.