Have you tried changing this setting to the opposite value? Sometimes the Feature Control settings can actually do the opposite of what you're expecting since the verbiage can be confusing. (i.e. By disabling this feature am I enabling it? and vice versa)

Disable Managed App Uninstallation

Hello Matt,

Thanks for input.  I certainly understand what you are getting out, the verbiage is definitely confusing...

I received the same results prior to, let's just say "checking the boxes".  For the record, checking these options were the instructions of the last SOTI support tech I worked with.  Essentially, I was advised that these values need to be enabled in conjunction with the Administrator Authentication to work properly. 

The problem here is that these parameters are set with no avail regardless of checking or un-checking associated features.

How did you install your so-called home-grown app?

Does the app installation need device end-user to grant "device administrator" permission within Settings?

Did you have the  all the following three options checked (i.e. ticked) in the Feature control profile payload :

• Disable Managed App Uninstallation
• Disable Installation from Unknown Sources
• Disable App Management

Do you intend to allow the app developer to freely install and uninstall successive trial versions of the app (while debugging the app) from the device UI alone (i.e. without any access to the MobiControl web-console, or having the device going into MobiControl's administrator mode using the admin password set in authentication profile payload)?

Raymond,

We deploy the application using Mobicontrol via Package Profile  (.PCG format built in MobiControl Package Studio).  This is our Warehouse PDI production application.

The deployment is seamless from Mobicontrol Console and requires absolutely no user interaction or administrative credentials.  We can deploy and uninstall 100% silently from the Console.

Yes all three options are enabled/checked

• Disable Managed App Uninstallation
• Disable Installation from Unknown Sources
• Disable App Management

Ideally, yes the end goal is to grant Developers the ability to locally install/uninstall from the TC72 device UI alone while debugging.  As far as requiring them to go into Mobicontrol Admin Mode, I have no preference.  Our Developers have the Admin Mode password so that wouldn't be a problem.  It just isn't working ;)

Is there potentially a feature or setting that's available in latest versions of Mobicontrol Console?  Perhaps it's not available to me in version 13.  

Thank you for response!

If your primary intention is to allow to freely install and uninstall trail app on the device,  then the app should be installed by them as apk rather than with .pcg as you do now.  In such case, the following feature-control options should be unchecked on their "test device(s)":

• Disable Installation from Unknown Sources
• Disable App Management

Once the debug process is done, and the production version is to be deployed to large number of users, create and deploy a .pcg package.   As it should be a managed app now on "production" devices, either one or both of the following feature-control options can be checked to prevent end-user from uninstalling it:

• Disable Managed App Uninstallation
• Disable App Management

The installed progam can easily be uninstalled by revoking (globally, group-level or on a per-device basis) the profile deploying the .pcg.

The above works quite well on various maintenance releases of v13.4.0  released in the last few months.  If you are using a very old v13 server, there might be problem.  The device agent version-/build-numbers may also be significant.  

Thank you very much Mr. Chan.  What you are recommending is essential what we do by standard (UAT testing in QA version of application before releases, .APK locally installed to device etc.).  The big difference being we have the ability to do this on Android+ devices with no changes or removal of features and so forth.  I completely understand it is an improvement in terms of security.

What I intend to do is keep our current processes in place until I'm able to schedule maintenance time and perform an upgrade to later version of Mobicontrol.  Fortunately this is not a mission critical issue so we can bare with it for the time being. It's just frustrating that we don't have this restriction with our older devices on the Android+ Agent and are having to adjust as we consider upgrading our entire environment to TC72 on the AE agent. 

Such is life as their are multiple ways to reach the destination.

Thanks again for your time, I really appreciate it!