1

App details:

I am writing an app that requires the user to have a device password set. The company distributes blackberry devices to its associates who will then use them to report on sales etc. The company wants to make sure that the device password is set so that the confidential information can not be easily accessed by anyone if they steal the phone. The app must not work if the password is not set, which is easy enough.

The problem:

The company wants the a message to come up saying "Please set a device password" and then direct the user to the device to the options menu to show them where to set their device password. Doing this seems troublesome

What I have tried so far:

I have looked into the ApplicationManager object, which allows you to bring an application to the foreground. However when I use the following code to see what applications are available:

ApplicationManager manager = ApplicationManager.getApplicationManager();
ApplicationDescriptor descriptors[] = manager.getVisibleApplications();
for(int i=0;i<descriptors.length;i++)
{
    String applicationName= descriptors[i].getName();
    System.out.println("applicationName");
}

The only visible applications are stuff like Phone, Messages, Blackberry Messages, Home Screen etc, but the options application is not present, which leads me to believe its not accessable from here. (If I'm wrong please let me know)

I have also taken a look at the Invoke.invokeApplication(appType, args) method, however the API does not have an appType constant for the options, or settings etc. The API specifies only the following types and I cannot find the one I need:

  • APP_TYPE_ADDRESSBOOK

  • APP_TYPE_BLUETOOTH_CONFIG

  • APP_TYPE_CALCULATOR

  • APP_TYPE_CALENDAR

  • APP_TYPE_CAMERA

  • APP_TYPE_MAPS

  • APP_TYPE_MEMOPAD

  • APP_TYPE_MESSAGES

  • APP_TYPE_PHONE

  • APP_TYPE_SEARCH

  • APP_TYPE_TASKS

I have scanned the API docs and I cannot find anything that looks right. Ive searched for Device and Options and Settings but none of the hits are relevant.

If anyone knows what to do then let me know.

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2 Answers2

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Unfortunately there's no standard API to invoke this screen programmatically. But there's a workaround. Use EventInjector to inject a sequence of keyboard events to open Options screen.

This way is not an elegant one, but I think it is the only workaround in this case.

UPDATE:

I would implement the following approach. Upon application startup I would check, whether device is password protected via DeviceInfo.isPasswordEnabled().

If device is not password protected I would display message: Device is not password protected. Please set password for your device in the device Options. And launch the application again.

I understand, this way is not elegant, but it is reliable and provides full information to the customers, how to use this application properly.

  • Yeah I guess that maaaybe could work. Sort of. There is the problem that I'm going to have to do different things for each OS version, as I believe the menus have changed. Furthermore I'm not sure how this will work seeing as I don't know how to navigate there, through the random amount of apps the person might have. – Jason Ridge Oct 10 '13 at 14:38
  • @JasonRidge Unfortunately there's no reliable way to do that. I have updated my answer, check the update, please. –  Oct 10 '13 at 17:31
1

Ok so as it turns out you can run internal apps using the ApplicationManager, so I launched the Options app using the following code:

  ApplicationManager.getApplicationManager().launch("net_rim_bb_options_app");

However this only launches the Options app, and does not navigate the user to the Security section.

The following blurb from this page helped me understand what this method really does:

Starting

A BlackBerry application can be started in a number of ways:

  • by the system automatically on device startup
  • by another application
  • by the system at a scheduled time

Regardless of how an application is started, the Application Manager is responsible for starting the process the application will run within.

The ApplicationManager class enables applications to interact with the Application Manager to perform tasks, including:

  • run an application immediately or at a scheduled time
  • interact with processes, including retrieving the IDs for foreground applications
  • post global events to the system

Entry points

The Application Manager starts an application by getting a new process and spawning a thread within that process to call one of the entry points of the application. For many applications, the main() method of its application class is the single entry point that is called. But you can configure more than one entry point for an application.

Using more than one entry point lets you create different ways for a user to start an application. For example, if your application allows users to create a new document, you might like to provide users with two icons that they can click to start the application. Users could click one icon to open the application to its home screen and the other icon to open the application to the screen required to create a new document.

Summary

So basically this method just runs the main method of the app, and supplies the arguments in the main method. It is my suspicion that the main method of the Options app does not allow for you to supply the page you want to open up on as an argument in the main method.

There is no documentation (as far as I can tell) on what arguments the options app takes, so short of guessing how it can be used, it seems that directing the user here and giving them some instructions on how to navigate further is my only option

u_u

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