Apply Policies to an App
Digital.ai App Management lets you apply policies to native iOS and Android apps in your account. Applying policies enables you to add multiple layers of security, management, and measurement capabilities to any iOS or Android app. For more information, see About Policies.
You can apply policies to an app that has never had policies applied, or you can change the policies already applied to an app. For instructions, see the procedure below.
For a description of each policy, including an overview of the mobile user's experience, see Available Policies.
For information about applying policies to an app using Digital.ai App Management's API, see Policies API Guide.
Notes
- A user who is deleted or disabled in Digital.ai App Management will be blocked from running apps that use any of policies that are part of the base Digital.ai App Management platform.
- You can deliver a web app as a native iOS or Android app by creating a hybrid app. Because a hybrid app is delivered as a native app, you can apply policies to it. For more information on hybrid apps, see Hybrid Apps (Delivering a Web App as a Native App).
- Applying policies to an app increases the size of the app.
Best Practice
As a best practice, Digital.ai recommends that you reapply policies to any apps that have not had policies reapplied in six months or longer. This will ensure that your apps take advantage of any recent enhancements, fixes, and optimizations to the policy layer. After you reapply policies to an application, you need to re-sign it and redistribute it to your users. For instructions, see Reapply Policies to an App.
If you use the signing package to sign an app that already has policies applied, and then upload that newly signed version to Digital.ai App Management, you should not reapply policies to the app. If you do, the app will no longer function properly. If you need to modify an app's policies or apply new policies, you need to first upload the original version of the app.
The Policies Tab
You will apply policies to individual apps on the app's Policies tab. The Policies tab includes the following sections:
No-Registration Mode
This section appears at the top of the page if No-Registration Policies are enabled for your organization. Using No-Registration policies is optional, and only matters if you want to apply policies to apps that you may distribute to to users who are not registered with Digital.ai App Management and do not need the App Catalog on their device, click On in the No-Registration Policies section at the top o the page. This section appears only if your organization is enabled for No-Registration Policies. For instructions on enabling no-registration policies, see Manage Policy Settings.
If this option is On, the list of policies includes only those policies that work with unregistered users. For more information on using policies with unregistered users, see Using Policies with Unregistered Users
Policy Status
This section appears at the top of the page and includes the app's policy status and the Apply Policies and Remove Policies buttons. Available status messages are listed at the end of this topic.
Policies Enabled by Default
This section only appears if an administrator has selected On for any policies on the Policies page. The policies here are selected by default, but you can clear the selection if you don't want to apply those policies to a specific app. This section disappears when policies are applied to the app.
Policies Available
This section lists the policies that can be applied to the app. Some apps can only be applied to iOS apps, so they won't appear in the list for Android apps. Use this section to select the policies you want to apply.
Some apps have additional options that should be configured for the policy to work properly. If a policy includes additional options, they appear when you select the policy. If an administrator has configured presets on the Policies page, some of the options may already be preconfigured. You can change the preconfigured options if you want, or leave them as is.
If you or another administrator changes the policy presets on the Policies page, it has no effect on policies you have already applied to an app. For instructions on modifying the policy presets, see Define Policy Presets.
Policies Applied
This section lists all policies that are currently applied to the app.
You can select and clear policies in this section, and modify their options. If you clear the checkbox for a policy in this section, it will be removed from the app the next time you click Apply Policies (the policy will appear back in the Policies Available section). Similarly, if you change a policy's options in this section, they will be updated the next time you click Apply Policies.
Apply Policies
To apply policies to an app
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On the Admin Portal navigation bar, click Applications. Status tags on the page indicate the status of policies for the app.
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Click the Policies link by the app to open the Policies tab for the app.
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Select policies and modify their options as necessary. Depending on whether presets have been configured on the Policies page, some policy options may already be preconfigured.
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As you select policies you may see a message that indicates whether the changes are effective immediately or require re-signing the app.
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Click Apply Policies at the top of the page. If you clear the check box for all policies, the Apply Policies button remains disabled. To remove all policies, click Remove Policies.
If you update the version of an app that has policies applied (that is, if you upload a new binary file for the app), you need to reapply the application policies and re-sign the app if you want the policies to continue working with the new version. For instructions on updating an app, see Edit or Update an Application.
Next Steps
The following table identifies the steps you should take based on the status message.
| | Status Message | Description | Next Steps |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | There are no policies currently applied to this app. | | | |
| 2 | Applying policies. Please wait | This message displays until the policies are applied or an error occurs. The size of the app may impact how long the process takes. | Wait until the status changes to one of the other messages listed in this table. | |
| 3 | Error Applying Policies | An error occurred while policies were being applied. There may have been a problem accessing the MAP server. | Wait a few minutes and click Apply Policies again. If you continue to receive an error, click the Remove Policies to remove all policies from the app.
Info: After you click Remove Policies, note that the app will still be disabled. You must enable it if you want users to access it in the App Catalog. For instructions, see the steps for the "policies were successfully applied" status message below. | |
| 4 | Policies were successfully applied. You must re-sign the app and deploy the updated app to your users for the changes to take effect. | Policies were successfully applied to the app and the new policy layer version of the app must be signed and uploaded to App Management. | Sign the app. For more information, see About Signing. | |
| 5 | Policies were successfully applied. | Policies were successfully applied to the app. | Look at the Enabled/Disabled status of the app listed at the top of the page.
If you signed the app after applying policies and did not enable it during the signing process, follow these steps to enable the app and notify users about the update:
1. On the Admin Portal navigation bar, click Applications.
2. Click the Edit link next to the application.
3. Expand the Application field.
4. Select the Enabled check box.
5. (for iOS apps only) Under Notify Users, select Send push notification to App Catalog. If you are updating an app signed for Ad Hoc distribution, there are different options for sending the push notification. For more information, see Update an Application.
6. Complete the Application Update Settings to select the date by which users must install the new version of the app:
_ Click Set to today to force users to update the application today. Users will not be allowed to log in to the App Catalog until they install the update.
_ Click Set to never to allow the user to decide when to update.
or
* Select a specific date in the calendar field.
7. Click OK. | |