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I have read the Apple documentation regarding Mobile Device Management (MDM) but did not find what I was looking for. Can somebody help me with the following?

  1. I have an enterprise account and I want to manage a few devices using MDM. Is it possible to install applications remotely (from the server side) to these devices that I am managing?

  2. If yes, can someone give the procedure of doing it or some documentation related to this?

Thanks.

UtopiaLtd
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Sandy
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    You cannot install apps without user intervention, but see the answer here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3098290/ios-4-wireless-app-distribution-for-in-house-applications for help. – Brandon Jul 15 '11 at 02:03

3 Answers3

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iOS 5 has added the ability to push a URL to the application manifest to the device using MDM, at which point the user will be asked if they want to install the application. The Apple MDM documentation has been updated to include the XML required to support this.

Abstractec
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You can host an application on your server with distributed profile. please see following link under Installing app Installing Apps Wirelessly.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html

ANUP
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Apple's Mobile Device Management (MDM) APIs do not provide a way for the server to initiate the installation of an application. However, you can create an internal website to host your enterprise applications so your user's can download and install the apps wirelessly. The Apple spec for this can be found at Distributing Enterprise Apps for iOS Devices: Installing apps wirelessly Please note that you do not need an MDM server to do this. These two things are not related.

One interesting tidbit: The manifest file described in the spec can contain multiple apps. This allows you to provide your user's with a single link that could install a suite of applications if you wanted to.

Michael Gaffney
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    This is no longer true for iOS5. – rlandster Jan 14 '12 at 16:00
  • @rlandster this is still supported with iOS 5 see [Distributing Enterprise Apps for iOS Devices: Installing apps wirelessly](http://help.apple.com/iosdeployment-apps/#app43ad871e) – Michael Gaffney Feb 10 '12 at 15:52
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    @MichaelGaffney I have successfully implemented this process to distribute the app. I have developed app upgrade mechanism to update to newer version. While installing the app from server, iOS system asks for confirmation via alert dialog. There are two buttons, Cancel and Install. When user taps on Cancel, I want a callback method to be called so that I can get notified of that and put compulsion on user to install the app by asking again to install. Can I do that? – Bharat Dodeja Feb 27 '13 at 12:30
  • @BharatDodeja No, there are no callback mechanisms. However, you could monitor the web server to see if the manifest was downloaded but not the ipa file. Not a perfect solution but it would provide you some visibility. – Michael Gaffney Feb 27 '13 at 15:51
  • @MichaelGaffney In that case, I have to develop a mechanism that until user does not update the app, I won't let them use app's functionality rather keep them on update `UIViewController`. – Bharat Dodeja Feb 27 '13 at 16:32