Managing iPhone(s) for Business

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Level 1

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Managing iPhone(s) for Business

Hello,

I have been looking for a while to determine the best way to manage iPhones we use for our business. We have several people with iPhones and I am not quite sure how this works with the Apple ID. Some of the users do not have an Apple ID and since these are the company's phones I beleive this ID should be the same for all phones so that we can manage them through one account. The question is how do we do this? Do we setup an Apple ID for the company instead of each user having thier own? For the most part each user has different contacts but the access to the phone is fairly typical. When they were new we did not set them up with an Apple ID and/or iCloud account but I wouldl ike to use the Find my iPhone app for locating lost devices, etc and want to be able to see them all on a community list so that we are not having to track phones with idividual Apple ID/iCloud accounts.

Thanks!

iPhone 4, iOS 6.0.1

Posted on Nov 18, 2012 10:54 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 19, 2012 1:28 AM in response to CK-XST

hello.

there are third party apps that do this job ure looking for. no need to manage them through Apple IDs.

i can recomend one, if u like, just that its only in beta tests. its made by Bitdefender. so, if ure interested, let me know, here.

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Answer 2

iToaster

Level 3

739 points

Nov 19, 2012 2:09 AM in response to CK-XST

What I've done is have a global iTunes account that's used for find my iPhone

Separate account for VPP for apps

iOS devices are managed by mdm (profile manager)

Users can use their personal iTunes account on the devices if they wish

What you have to be careful of is users enabling iCloud calendar etc

And suddenly broadcasting their appointments to one and all because all devices are on the same global iCloud iTunes account

Or changing the main iCloud account to their own which removes the device from the company iTunes find my iPhone

What I do if they want their own iTunes account on the device is move the company find my iPhone iCloud

To a secondary icloud account setup on the device which is not the primary default icloud account

Users see when they first enter setting, so it's less likely to get fiddled with

I don't restrict settings on the devices, you could always enable it to stop users fiddling about

Depending on your company policy you may need to let users know they can be tracked at any time via find my iPhone

Although not that accurately at times

I think an mdm solution would be better than relying on find my iPhone which could easily be disabled by users

Profiles pushed to devices can also be removed but if you structure your profile you can make it so if a user deletes the profile, they loose everything mail network etc

Most mdm solutions can lock wipe etc devices

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