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Telcom management on IOS

KL
Kevin Lindsay
Dowler-Karn Limited

Over the last 2 months we have rolled out Mobi Control to 152 iPhone 7 devices.  We have had a few issues with the Mobi control system but Soti tech support has been able to now get us sorted out to a point where I am gaining confidence in the system.  Now that the dust has settled a little bit we have turned our attention to the telcom management piece in an attempt to reign in a number of our high data usage users. According to our sales person, and Soti's own documentation (https://www.soti.net/media/6018/telecomexpensemanagement.pdf) this feature is fully supported on IOS devices.  We have been struggling to implement any sort of limit warnings in our environment and have since been told by Soti tech support that for this feature to work on IOS the Mobi control app must not only be running on the users phone but also be in the foreground?  This cannot be correct is it?

iOS
7 years ago
SOTI MobiControl
ANSWERS
SS
Support Staff Account
7 years ago (edited 7 years ago)

Hi Kevin,

Apples iOS protects user privacy by allowing the user to decide which apps can use features such as TEM and when. MobiControl is therefore limited to providing "best-effort" when offering features for iOS devices. Nonetheless here is an excerpt from the help file regarding this awesome feature!

See #8 for specific details

Creating a Telecom Expense Management Rule

  1. On the iOS tab, go to the Rules tab.
  2. Right-click Telecom Expense Managment to open the Create Telecom Expense Management Rule dialog.
  3. Enter a name for your Telecom Expense Management rule and click Next.
  4. Select the devices or device groups that you want to target with this rule and click Next.
  5. Select a telecommunications plan to associate with this rule from the dropdown.

    If you have not already created a telecommunications plan, select Add New Plan from the dropdown and fill in the fields.

  6. You can set a soft threshold or a hard threshold or both. See below for more information on the threshold settings.
  7. Once all the fields are filled in, click Next.
  8. [Optional] Enable Collect TEM data in the background. This feature requires the use of an app enabled with the MobiControl iOS SDK.

    If you do not enable this setting, data usage information is only updated and collected from devices when the MobiControl agent is in the foreground of the device.

  9. [Optional] To limit how much data devices retain for each collected item, you can truncate items when they reach a certain size and age.
  10. Review your settings. Click Advanced to set a Rule Activation / Deactivation Schedule.
  11. Click Finish to save your Telecom Expense Management Rule.

I have sent you a link to the help file page with more detailed information regarding this.

Hope this helps!

KL
Kevin Lindsay
7 years ago

So it is true then. The only way to effectively use the TEM feature on IOS is to either...

Instruct the users to always have the mobi control app in the foreground (impractical to the point of being almost impossible) or we write some sort or IOS app that includes your SDK and hope my users have enough of a use for said app it to remember to leave the program running in the foreground.

I am sorry but neither the document I linked, nor the sales person I spoke with at length about this feature and others on IOS (that have proved grossly overstated) mentioned anything about a limitation so severe as to render it essentially useless.  Saying "Telephone Expense Management with SOTI MobiControl is supported on all platforms - Android, iOS, Windows Phone" is overselling to the point of dishonesty.  SOTI TEM on IOS simply does not work in it's purchased form, regardless of whether that is SOTI's fault or Apples.

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