Allow entire Play Store apps

[dagarva]

Hi, we are deploying SM in our enviroment and I had a question that I was not able to find.

Is it possible to allow all play store by default and just block apps that we want?

Right now as it works, only allowed apps are showed on the Play Store but we would like to do the invert process, allow all apps and only block some of them

[PhilipDAth]

Try defining an application blacklist and leaving it blank.

[dagarva]

yes, we did that and it works for native apps, but not for Play Store apps.

[alemabrahao]

This can be achieved by configuring the payload as a blocklist.

The block list selectively blocks specific apps and allows all others, so you can add the unique app ID or bundle ID of an app to the block list. For example, “com.meraki.sm”, “com.google.*”.

Take a look at the documentation.

App allowing/denying list in security policies - Cisco Meraki Documentation

[dagarva]

Sorry I don't follow you, please confirm if you mean this:

On security policies -> All devices enable Application as block list and specify there only one app that I don't use.

Then the policy will block only this app and will show the rest of the apps inside the play store?

[alemabrahao]

According to the documentation it's supposed to work, but you'll have to test it yourself.

Give it a try and let us know.

[PhilipDAth]

Correct, but don't specify any apps.  Zip.  Nada.  Zero.

[dagarva]

Hi both @alemabrahao @PhilipDAth 

tried with only one app and without apps and it didn't work.

Without apps cannot be saved, you can do something like this:

but after save it, the check is not selected

I can login with a personal google account, switch to it and install whatever I want, but I would like to don't need google accounts on devices as we don't work with G environment.

[van604]

@dagarva  just curious on your approach for allow all and block certain ones.  as it seems intuitive to just allow the ones you want to allow, as there are so many suspect apps lurking in the all list

[dagarva]

first MDM, big&young company and very heterogeny environment so we cannot make this list for now, we will need time to know what we need to allow and don't stop the business

[van604]

interesting, thanks for that info, i guess Billy-Sue need's their candy crush fix. 

[PaulF]

So long as you haven't blocked the ability to modify account settings, the user can very easily click the icon top right of Google Play, click the down arrow next to the AFW account, and then add another account giving them access to all of google play

[dagarva]

Hi Paul,

yep, but I would like to block their gmail accounts and provide access to all of the apps, if they connect gmail account the data control is so hard as we don't use nothing around G environment