John, the CEO of FieldForce+ is super-excited because he’s just secured a major win with CellPlus, a game-changer cellular service provider. He’s also nervous: the contract needs FieldForce+ to configure numerous cell sites in time for the Festive Season launch, barely 2 months away.
John is aware that, as the entrant in a competitive market, he’s being squeezed for his price. But… if FieldForce+ delivers, they’ll get a bigger chunk of the deployment plan, not only from CellPlus, but will attract the attention of the incumbent players.
John’s got a good team: they’re hardworking; up to the challenge. But they need stay synchronised to a hectic schedule and, more than that, focussed. He cannot afford downtime, nor underperformance.
As part of ops management, CellPlus has an in-house software to dispatch work schedules and collects statuses in real time. At the other end, on the field engineers’ mobile devices, is a companion Android CellPlus app, receiving work orders, site details, deadlines and gathering KPI data for management. CellPlus will issue phones with their app preloaded. But, field work is exhausting; interspersed with the local or intercity commute. What’s to stop John’s team from using the devices to unwind, between sites or on site? Fieldwork is also dangerous; John needs to know where each resource is – if only to get help to them in emergencies.
John figures he needs a way to control these phones. He discovers an app called Scalefusion on the Play Store. Its description looks promising. He installs it on his phone, breezes through an easy setup and realises Scalefusion has taken over his default launcher. In Settings, he sees ‘Manage Applications’. Intuitively, he selects one app from the list. John’s happy that now he’s able to use only that one app on his phone. Returning to Settings, he notes other configuration options.
John believes MobilLock is the solution to his problem.
The next day, he tasks a team manager with exploring Scalefusion and its cloud-based dashboard. She checks it out and is able to schedule a product demo. By afternoon, she’s ready to present a solution to John:
“We can have ‘Field Engineer’ and ‘Deployment Manager’ groups and profiles,” she explains. “Engineers have the CellPlus app, location sharing on, and no access to websites or Wi-Fi. We’ll keep the FieldForce+ webmail, Skype for Work app for the manager profile. Since engineers have access only to the CellPlus app, we can be assured none of the devices will be misused. Using Scalefusion’s dashboard, we can see where our engineers are, broadcast messages to them.”
“Which addresses our safety concerns,” John understands.
“There’s an option to set an app as default. Meaning, the app runs continuously, from device boot. It can be pushed into the background for a specified time. Handy, if we want to temporarily allow another activity, like reading a Broadcast.”
“Super. Let’s get in touch with Scalefusion, get licensed, discuss things with them.”
***
Scalefusion by Promobitech, Pune, offers a powerful Mobile Application Management feature-set. Apps are remotely configured by an administrator, using a cloud-based dashboard. If you’ve got hundreds of devices geographically spread out, or a time constraint makes it difficult to collect every device at a central location, then this feature is a life-saver!
Application Management works through Scalefusion’s Groups and Device Profiles. A group is a collection of devices, and profiles are config instructions for groups. A profile can be applied to several groups. Profiles control Wi-Fi and Hotspot, Internet data connectivity, OS settings, notifications, the navbar… and applications.
There are two ways to configure applications in a profile.
The first revolves around pre-existing apps on a device. An administrator desires to enable an app, control its visibility on the home screen This is achieved via the Device Profiles → Edit profile → Select Apps.
Admins can set a single app to run by default. For example, a restaurant wants only its menu/ ordering app to always run on devices handed to customers. The duration that a default app can be temporarily pushed into the background is configurable via Optional Settings under Edit Profile.
Alternatively, Scalefusion offers enterprise subscribers the ability to publish custom apps to devices or select among Scalefusion apps from an ‘Enterprise Store’. The store is available at USD 3/- per year per device, capped at 50MB. Admins upload APKs to the store and then push them to selected profiles. Of course, permissions to bypass Play Store-only installations are granted when Scalefusion is installed on the devices.
Once your app is on the device, use Edit Profile to tweak additional settings as you would for a preinstalled app. Oh, and if you’re picky about presentation, you can rearrange app icons on the dashboard, and the appearance is reflected on the devices.
It’s that simple! In the unlikely event that you get stuck, Scalefusion is just a phone call or an email away!
