The Android-Plus device agents for some device brand do support enforcing persistent GPS and thus do not allow the device end-user to turn GPS off.

For all Android-Enterprise devices in Managed-Device (also called Device-Owner mode), it should be possible to enforce the location accuracy option.  However, enforcing the GPS hardware to be turned on always may only be possible with some brand/models with such control in their firmware.  Such control is likely offered in the OEMconfig compliant plug-in of the corresponding brand.

For either cases, the support does not depend on whether a lockdown menu is enabled or not.  However, for devices without such support, the workaround is probably to turn on the GPS hardware, and then enable lockdown menu and disable Settings as well as all other UI 's that allow any end-user to turn GPS hardware off.

Once the GPS is on, you can include a data-collection rule for the device agent to collect location information at supported interval to be sent to the MobiControl server.

Hi Raymond,

Thank you for answering, The devices are all enrolled as Enterprise with the gps turn on and accuracy at max. The devices are Samsung S5e with the most up to date plugin. I cannot see any documentation anywhere regarding not being able to do this on these devices.

I think at v15 Mobicontrol have feature Group location, click on the Detail group and check the location option.

You can see the location on a map in the device's location tab or the detailed longitude/lattiude data information from the device's "Collected Data"  tab.

Hi Randy,

You are correct in saying you can check the location on the group instead of on each device, but the issue still persists.

Hi Raymond,

There is no data in the location tab or Collected data. I have a rule to collect this from the device every 2 hours...

If there is no location data reported in the "collected data" tab, you can check  if the data is still cached in the device agent buffer.  Try to include %battery level and  more frequent (say every 5 or 10 minutes) in your data collection rule  and see if you can get any location or battery data reported.  If there is battery data, but not location data, then either the GPS/location service is not on, or the GPS hardware is on but the received signal is not strong enough to get a valid location estimate.

After fixing the problem, you can leave out battery level and set a more appropriate collection interval in your data-collection rule for actual production use.

I'll give this a try, and update the post with the results. Thanks Raymond!

Hi Raymond,

There are 13 Devices out of 295 that have collected data. The only error message is the following "Device failed to locate (Request Timeout)"

The devices that have collected data have done so for both Battery and Location, Any devices that failed to report their location also failed to report the battery level.

For the 282 devices that fail to have any battery as well as location data, check

1. if the same data-collection rule  have already been deployed  to such devices  (e.g. check device log tab for any suspicious warning/error message)

2. the device have been powered up and active for sufficient time to have the cached data flushed and sent back to your server

3. their difference(s)  (e.g. firmware version/build, agent version/build, brand/model, etc.) compared with the 13 that can successfully collect data, to see if the data collection really doesn't work.

Hi Raymond,

1.   I created a new rule with location and battery percentage, All the devices had the rule

2.   I believe most of the devices had been online for a while, I am assuming that as it was also a different rule it would not use Cached data?

3.   Firmware should all be the same, Some may have a more up to date version but the latest released was June 2019. About half of the devices are on an older agent version(14.1.6.1018), All the devices are the same brand and model, Brand being Samsung, Model being SM-T720. Galaxy Tab S5e

I would like to add that after a bit more investigation on the rule it looks like quite a few devices have now reported battery percentage but not location. Could the WiFi network it is connected to block the location reporting?