BlackBerry Enterprise Server Development

[Innovatology]

We would like to allow admins to configure our app via BES: enable or disable certain app features, pre-populate settings etc. I've had a quick look at some documentation, and it seems the IT policies all relate to device features or preinstalled apps. Is configuration of 3rd party apps a supported BES use case? 

The app in question (see sig) is a PlayBook app. We realize that it's still early days for BES & PlayBook, but we'd like to get on board as early as possible and make sure our app is enterprise-friendly.

[gbeukeboom · Accepted solution]

This can be done for Java applications currently, but as there is currently not BES-PlayBook integration  the same would not be possible for PlayBook. One possible solution for the interim would be to configure a local server with a settings file that is retrieved the first time the application is run to configure its settings.

[Innovatology]

Hi Garret,

I assumed that this would not (yet) be available for PlayBook. Just want to be prepared for when this does arrive. If there are any beta oportunities, I'd be interested.

As for the interim solution: How would the app know which address to load on first startup?

Cheers, - Jon -

[gbeukeboom]

Hi Jon,

For information on any possible BES Betas please go through your current support process. As this would not be an application development platform beta I would not be able to provide details for you.

As for the URL to load, this may need to be manually configured by the user for the time. 

[Innovatology]

Thanks Garret.

[Innovatology]

Garret,

Now that Fusion/Balance/BDS is available on PlayBook is there an update on this?

Are there any pointers for PB developers about interacting with or running under control of Fusion/Balance/BDS?

[gbeukeboom]

There are currently no APIs to read IT Policies. What sort of features are you looking to enable/disable? May be good to submit into Issue Tracker as a feature request.

[Innovatology]

For instance, to make our Files & Folders file management app (see sig) more enterprise friendly, we'd like to allow IT admins to control which cloud services are available (if any), what users can do with them and perhaps pre-configure accounts.

That would allow users to use e.g. their corporate Google Docs, but have read-only access to other cloud services and disable the e-mail send feature, effectively keeping corporate documents within the company perimiter.

[gbeukeboom]

The way the PlayBook works currently already restricts corporate files and applications from being seen or passed externally. The scenario you are explaining below should mostly be taken care of, but the remainder seems almost as though it would require custom tailoring of the application to suit a specific enterprise's needs (eg cloud services).

[Innovatology]

As I understand it, under BB Balance any app installed on the work side has access to the work files. So any sharing functionality built in to such an app (and that's most apps nowadays) is  a security risk. Thus, for apps to be usable in the corporate market there need to be a mechanisms:

• for an app to define what app-specific policies/settings are available (e.g. "share button on/off"), 
• for an IT admin to choose/configure those policies globally or for specific users/groups, 
• for the app to read what the admin has chosen/configured for the current user.

Pretty similar to Windows policies. Not rocket surgery.