Android for Work and Contacts.....

[HERNDONBRENT]

For folks that have deployed Android for Work, how do you guys handle the CONTACTS piece on the phone?  Obviously the phone/Android has a CONTACTS piece and also Workspace has Contacts inside it.  Obviously, in the past users have their Contacts showing up on the Android side.  So with Android for Work, what is the easiest way to make this seamless for the user?  I would assume their is a way to make the Contacts reside in one area where they can access them from inside Workspace and outside of Workspace. 

[Tbibb123]

Hello Herndon,

What we have done is hide the contacts app inside of the workspace container, you can set it up as a blacklisted app, com.samsung.androids.contacts.
Then inside of the android profile, under application control, you can select ' disable access to blacklisted apps' . This will hide the app.
This will only remove the contacts from the workspace container, and it will leave the on the normal side, because you are only managing the container via airwatch.
We also use boxer, which has their work contacts inside the boxer app itself. Then most put personal contacts on the normal contacts app outside of the container.

Thanks!

[Boe_K]

Hey Herndon we currently do don't anything special other than our FAQ section of our enrollment guide lets users know their will be some duplicate apps (contacts being one of them) as a result of Google's Android Enterprise Config. Just like Terry we use Boxer and have things enabled so that the user can either see their contacts in Boxer or if they go to the Phone Dialer or personal Contacts app they can search for a Work Contact and it will pull thru as well.

[HERNDONBRENT]

While waiting to hear back from AirWatch Support....I am thinking that their is probably not a way for the Contacts App (that is native to the phone) can be synched to the Contacts app in Workspace (Outlook/Exchange contacts)?  With that being said I imagine it would make more sense to just instruct users to NOT CREATE contacts in the Contacts App that is local on the phone.  That way if the create a Contact in Workspace one it is getting synched up to Exchange and can see that contact when they are in Outlook on their computer.  Does that seem to make the most sense?  Not sure if that is what other may be doing.  Right now I am not able to get the Contact that is on the phone to be seen in Boxer in Workspace. 

[COOAngie]

This is also an issue we are dealing with. 

[Boe_K]

Herndon that is correct if you are using Boxer you should instruct the user to create the contact in Boxer. I believe their is a way to do this via the Android Enterprise Contacts app that gets deployed as a part of enrollment but that could lead to confusion since the user could click on the wrong one. We just advise our users to create them in Boxer that way they sync back to the Exchange.

[jpjp1]

Also seeing a usability issue here, there is only 1 phone app on the personal space with a COPE device enrolled. This samsung dialer phone app cannot see the contacts that are sync'ed into the work area , meaning they cannot see their enterprise contacts when getting or placing a call on the bluetooth car phone , or just for caller ID.
Using boxer, and these appear in the contacts under ' work' , but never

Will be submitting a request as the same behavior exists without any profiles installed or explicit restrictions enabled.

Workaround for end user was to export from work, import into personal to see enterprise contacts from exchange. One time workaround, and would not keep sync'd without manually importing each new contact added through exchange.

[troysp]

Currently we are seeing this same issue of not being able to synchronize contacts from the Boxer app to the Android phones native contacts app.  This is a nuisance for users since this does not give the user Caller ID functionality for the phone with regards to contacts the user has in Outlook.  I am curious if anyone has heard more from VMware on this issue.  I was going to open a ticket on this issue but found this forum post and thought I would try here first.

[jpjp1]

Yes, I put in a ticket with this exact issue. We cannot share contacts with the 'personal' area of the device, meaning our users could not share contacts correctly with the respective devices.

I enabled the following, which allowed the car Bluetooth to at least see the phonebook containing enterprise contacts:

- Allow Work contact's caller ID info to show in phone dialer
- Allow Work Contacts in Personal Contacts App
- Share Enterprise Contacts with Bluetooth Devices

There is not a real way to view contacts across personal and work, and this is a design issue from Google, not from vmware. The workaround is to use your google account and export and import across from the 2 containers. this is not convenient, but its the only way that this accomplished.

[troysp]

I find it interesting that this is a Google or Apple issue, since this issue appears on iPhones also with regards to syncing contacts.  We recently moved from Blackberry and were able to synchronize contacts from the Work app to the phones without issue.

[GunnarrnInglfss]

I'm also getting user feedback requesting this function. Both iOS and Android users cannot access Boxer contacts in native contact app, and therefor cannot be relied upon for Caller ID.