The IT Melting Pot!

I got to play around with @WorkWeb and @WorkMail apps a bit… and I must say that the process to get the Me@Work apps into AppController isn’t the simplest there is for someone that haven’t been doing iOS app development before.

But what I’m describing here is what’s now named XenMobile AppController and a part of the XenMobile bundle:

(Note: picture from Citrix)

So lets try to summarise the steps involved in getting these @WorkWeb and@WorkMail apps into your AppController and then published them to your users!

1. Get your hands on a Macbook!
2. Download the App Preparation Tool for iOS Applications and install it on the client
3. Download and install Xcode (not 100% necessary but I recommend that you do that to simplify the creation/download of Distribution certificates and Distribution Profiles)
4. Open XCode and open Preferences->Downloads,
5. Click to install Command Line Tools (if you don’t do this then you might end with the error below when trying to wrap the apps)
    (error displayed:

   [PrepareTool Wizard] Failed to execute dylibcodesign with exit code: 1, http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX135253

   )

6. Now you should be all set on your device, the only thing that is missing is the iOS Distribution Profile and the Distribution Certificate for that profile. So log on to your Apple Developer Profile and create a certificate and the Distribution Profile.
7. Now it’s time to open the Citrix App Wrapping tool and select the @WorkMail app that you like to wrap
   
8. Press Next
9. I just accepted the default settings/properties
   
10. Press Next
11. Select your iOS Distribution Profile and the iOS Distribution Certificate that you’ve downloaded to your device already, press Create.
12. Click Finish (and redo the process for @WorkWeb)
    
13. Copy the *.mdx file to a location on which where you can reach it from your AppController admin web session.
14. Log on to AppController
    
15. Now you’ll see the overview section of AppController (AND YES, there is A LOT MORE to expect from Citrix here.. they could add a lot of neat features and reporting capabilities here), click the Apps & Docs tab
    
    
16. Go to the iOS section in the left menu
    
17. Click the + button to add an app
    
18. Select the *.mdx file of your app (in this case I choose WorkWeb)
    
19. Configure your mobile app details, categories and roles
    
20. Select any Workflow if needed
    
21. Ok, now you’re at the most interesting page where you can do the real config of your WorkWeb app. You can here restrict the app behaviour and make restrictions! This is cool! I suggest that you read through each setting and have a look what you can configure. More details and best practises to come in another blog post!
    
22. Click Save to close and enable the app for the end-users!

And now you should be all set to consume the app as an end-user! So go to your iPhone and launch the Receiver!! 🙂

As you can see here I now have the WorkWeb app in the Receiver once I’ve signed on:

Then you just click the + button to add the WorkWeb app to your iPhone:

And of course we trust EnvokeIT! 😀

And you might get this problem if your StoreFront was configured wrong for mobile device enrolment into AppController:

This basically is a result of that the device cannot register properly with the AppController, and as a result of that you have not configured StoreFront properly. Please follow this guide to get it working properly:

Configuring StoreFront for Mobile Devices

And if you have other issues with Android devices and AppController see this great blog post from Arun Krishnan.

And then of course we can launch our little @WorkWeb app and browse to our internal web sites securely! And yes I know the site I’m visiting isn’t the one that you’d provide access to but didn’t have much more fun to show from my demo environment! 😉

And that’s it… I must say that I really like and believe in the WorkWeb app! It’s simple (too simple to solve most use cases and apps) and does the job of a small little secure browser. What I’d like to see to come in the future though is SSO support for different methods like Basic 401, Form, SAML and Kerberos from the Receiver to the internal sites. That would be neat to have a mini-AAA service within this secure browser!

And another great feature I must say is the Mobile Links, this is where you can “recommend” native apps that may be suitable for your users. As you can see here we have a few published.

And if you click them the link takes you to AppStore to download it. This in true MAM mode so you can both deliver your apps to be installed and controlled as well as recommend other apps. A great opt-in service for you users (and not a pushed way like you can with true MDM solutions like the new XenMobile/Zenprise that I have a post coming on very soon).

But WorkMail I must say is a chapter on its own… had some real troubles with that one though we use Office 365… so more info on that in another post!

//Richard