Setting up Android 9 devices

[sirjohnson]

I'm having problems setting up new Android devices for GMS.

Older devices had a port number field that I changed to 8443 to connect to our GMS server.  New version of Android removed that setting.

The settings that work for an iPhone, mobileserver.com:8443, isn't working for the Androids.

Has anyone figured out how to set them up? 

Thanks,

Rich

[laurabuckley]

@sirjohnson 

Hi,

Bear in mind that some devices just simply do not have a port field you can edit.  Hence the general recommendation for always running GMS on the default ports.

Cheers,

[sirjohnson]

@laurabuckleyThanks for the quick reply.

Not the answer I was looking for, but I think I'll have to move on to plan B and play around with the firewall.

Unfortunately default port is used for Web Access. Though now we have more mobile users than Webaccess users.  So I'll probably swap them.

Thanks again.

Rich

[RaveNet]

A few things to note.

1, use a firewall reverse proxy with official 3rd party signed certificates, or letsencrypt certs if your firewall supports.  Bypasses the limitation of 1 service per standard 443 port.

2. Android has many dozens of available mail clients, you don't have to stick with what is bundled with the device, which is usually gmail or Samsung mail.  Consider other, better options such as BlackBerry hub, Aquamail or even Outlook for android

3. consider enrolling devices using an MDM/UEM solution such as zenworks as this can be used to preconfigure most android mail apps via appconfig to push the required settings down.

[mrosen]

Please note that this totally depends on the Activesync client you use, which is (may be?) device specific. The only default email/Activesync client on Android8+ is gmail, and that *does* certaily allow you to change the port when configuring the server on all Android versions. So yo may want to use this.

Or pick one of the many alternative (free or not) email clients for Android supporting Activesync. I for instance have switched to Nine for all my devices, just to no longer have to face a new email client with every new device I get, and have never looked back.

[sirjohnson]

@RaveNet 

Thanks for the suggestions.  Reverse proxy route is what I'll setup to move over to the default port.

I have an MDM, ZCM, have it setup for Apple devices, not for Droids.  I don't have a test droid and only a handful of droid users.  That would have been the next step, but I found a third-party activesync client with a setup that has a port field and it works like a charm.

[sirjohnson]

@mrosen 

Thanks for the Nine suggestion.  Works like a champ and user is happy!

Rich