NEVER Give An Employee A Tablet Or Phone Without Doing This First!

What's going on everybody? It's Richard Kohberg here, the blue collar nerd. You know, if you're watching this channel, chances are you are working in a paperless company or you're about to be working in a paperless company. And if you work in a paperless company, then that means you have a bunch of employees running around with tablets and phones. So I ask you today, what's your process like to prepare a company owned device to be given to an employee? Because if it looks like this, huh, your tablet's in, here you go, you're doing it all wrong. This is something I don't see done anywhere near enough and it scares the crap out of me. When you give an employee a company owned device, there's a certain process that needs to be followed so that that device stays under the control of the company within reasonable standards. This is called MDM or mobile device management. And it's super important to have installed on any company owned device. With an MDM you can do things like install and uninstall apps for an employee even if that app is pay. You can buy licenses and then put those licenses on your devices. You can also disallow app installation altogether. Unless it's through the company. You can pretty much control every aspect of the device as long as it's set up properly. Now to be clear, we're talking about the device's restrictions, functionality and settings. We're not talking about anything privacy related. You won't be able to see anybody's emails or text messages or anything like that no matter what. And that's good. So for example, I have a specific wallpaper and a specific app layout that all of my devices have so they can't change the wall to something crazy. And all the apps are going to be laid out in the same fashion for every employee. You can also do things like tie in calendars and Wi fi networks and whatever. With an mdm, not everybody has to follow the exact same rules. So if you want to have technicians have a certain set of apps that gets pre installed on their phones and a certain set of rules that they have to follow, you can have that separate from managers. You have a different set of apps that gets pre installed and a different set of rules and a different everything, different wallpaper, whatever. You can always separate them into groups and those groups will have their own settings. You can allow and disallow airdrop, you can add airprint, print. You can allow or disallow in app purchases. You can allow or disallow the Itunes store, you can allow or disallow, touch or face id allow auto unlock allow Siri when locked Allow voice dialing, force a pin allow bookstore erotica Allow spell check. I don't know why you wouldn't want them to have spell check. App removal system, App removal enterprise app trust imessage bookstore, Game center news, podcast radio service, music service, you can control it all. Now, there's a few different ways to do this, and it's important that you get by the way for this. I'm assuming you're using Apple devices. You can do this with Android and other devices as well. The process is a little bit different, but you can put most anything under an mdm. First you're going to need to decide on an MDM provider. I happen to use one called simple mdm. Simple MDM is not sponsoring this video or anything. I wish they were, but they're not. So use it, don't use it, I don't care. Just find an mdm, read the reviews, make sure it's going to do what you want. Now the next thing you need to do is make sure that you set up all your devices in supervised mode. You can put an MDM on a device not in supervised mode, but it takes away a lot of its great capabilities. So you definitely want to make sure it's in supervised mode. There's a couple of ways you can do this. The best way to do this is through Apple's dep, that's their device enrollment program. Now, unfortunately, it's a little bit of a pain in the butt to get this set up. You have to make an Apple business account. You have to have all kinds of stuff like a DUNS number. And there's some restrictions on where you can buy your devices. If you do that, you're going to have the easiest time. If you buy them directly through Apple, you can do it through Authorized Reach. It gets a little bit more complicated. You're gonna have a better time just doing it through Apple. Basically what happens is you buy the device, it puts in the serial numbers, and then as soon as those devices turn on, they're automatically set up in supervised mode the way you want. Now the second best way to do this is through Apple configurator. Now for this one, you need access to a Mac computer. Now, it's important that you do this before setting this device up at all. So you're gonna plug the device in fresh out of the box. Then you can set it up through configurator in supervised mode. Once it's in supervised mode. Then you go to your mdm, add it in through there, set up all your rules, and you've got a nice, properly set up managed device. So what kind of problems does this solve? Well, let's say your technician gets a new set of gauges that have some sort of app tied to them and they need to install that app. Easy. You just install it from the office. Easy. Let's say there's an app that your technicians use every day that they rely on that's having some sort of problem. And the only way to solve that problem is to uninstall the app and reinstall the app. Easy. You just do it it from the office. No walking them through it over the phone, No, I forgot my own icloud password. None of that. You just do it. One, two, three. From the office. You can also set up an auto update policy so that all of the devices stay up to date. You don't have any problems creeping up from just outdated software and nobody updating. Boy, I got huge data overage bills from everybody watching Netflix on their cell phones. Netflix is not allowed. Problem solved. Hey boss, what's the WI fi password? It's already on your phone. Never ask me a stupid question again. When's the next time I'm on call? Well, the on call calendar is programmed into your native calendar app on your phone. Never ask me a stupid question like that. Your technicians aren't going to have a wallpaper of an astronaut drinking beer on the moon that they then face towards your clients and try to present something to them. I'm starting to get rained on. Let's pick this up. Now. This is not meant to be a comprehensive, step by step tutorial on how to set all this stuff up. If that's something that you feel like you need and you're interested in that, let me know. That's something I can do. But that's not this video. This video is more a public service announcement. Now listen, this part's really important. If you're not going to hear anything else I say in this video, hear this. Do not, do not have a shared company icloud account. Don't do it. That's the worst idea. ICloud accounts are meant for a single individual. A single individual who has multiple devices. It's made to share information across those devices because it's assuming it's all one person. If you have a company icloud account, you're just asking for trouble. It's just a time bomb that's bound to go off. At some point, if you have a shared company icloud account, that's an emergency. You need to fix that today. Let's say your young technician Timothy sends his girlfriend a belly button pic or to whatever the kids are into these days, anybody in the company could potentially see that if they're on that icloud account. No good, no good. Obviously Timothy shouldn't be doing that in the first place on the company phone especially. But I mean, it is what it is. So make sure there's no data sharing happening. That will happen if you have a shared icloud account. An MDM is the proper way for a company to manage multiple devices. An ICLOUD account is not. An icloud account is made for individuals. MDM is made for businesses. Now, one drawback of setting it up through configurator, train, getting rained on, getting trained on. I gotta stop shooting these things outside. All right? Now if you don't use Apple's dep, there is one big downside, and that is that if your employee goes digging through the settings, they can potentially find this button to remove the management. You get a notification. When that happens, you'll be alerted, but they can do it. And then you have to corral them in and put it back on. It's a whole to do. Now you may think to yourself, who would do that? Who's going to dig through the settings and uninstall the management from the company? And who's going to do that? Come on, seriously. This is how mine are set up. Okay? I did it through configurator because I already had existing devices and it's hard to do depending on with existing devices. It's really made for brand new devices out of the box. Right? So that's how mine are set up. I do have a couple of guys out there right now running around with no management on their devices because they uninstalled it and I haven't been able to wrangle them and get them back in the office so I can put it back. If you can do it through the dep, do it through dep. That's the best way. They can't uninstall it. You truly are the captain now through configurator, you're more like first mate. Hey, thank you so much for watching the video. If you find this content valuable, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Please, please, please. And also hit the like button. That really helps me out. Hey, by the way, look who's getting his life together. Huh? Huh? Look at that. That's pretty clean, right? Respect, Sam.