Lost Mode not reporting GPS location on campus, instead location reported by IP

[ekramer]

While it is nice that the Meraki MDM app on an iPad is continually sending location data, our fleet of iPad devices' location map is invariably reporting their location by IP (or sometimes IP override) when the device is on our network. The devices are then all reporting out of our central building (our public IP's street address).

Our campus is not huge, but it spans a couple of city blocks; we'd like to see which building it is in via GPS coordinates.  How can we get Meraki to display the GPS coordinates reported by a device in Lost Mode instead of the inferred location by IP?

[PaulF]

There's 4 different sets of information that Systems Manager uses to infer location:

• IP address
• BSSID (Base Station ID of the WiFi Access Point it's connected to)
• Meraki BSSID
• GPS

Some caveats to this:

• Only IP address is available through Apple's MDM. Everything else is gathered using the Systems Manager app
• BSSID is inferred from a database that other companies / users maintain, so it's not guaranteed to be accurate
• Meraki BSSID can be VERY accurate, but only if the access point is in the same organization as your Systems Manager instance, AND only if you've placed the access point accurately in Meraki Dashboard
• The SM app has to be running in the background for the information above to be retrieved

Okay, so how do we ensure that we get the best information from the device?

The first place to start is by having a look at your ADE (formerly DEP) profile.... Where you can skip steps at setup, did you skip Location? If so, your device won't report GPS. And it's such a pain to turn back on retrospectively. So, if you're skipping Location, consider changing this

Ensure that the SM app is running in the background, and tat Background app refresh is enabled for it. Sadly, there's no way for us to systematically turn this on using Systems Manager: It's just not available to us using Apple's MDM functionality

And, of course, if your using meraki Access Points, ensure that they are in both the same organization as your systems manager instance, and that you've placed them accurately in your dashboard

I do hope that helps...

[ekramer]

Paul -- Thanks for the background descriptions.

• We do not skip the prompt to Enable Location Services during setup, but it is user prerogative and some decline
• I hadn't thought about a user disabling Background App Refresh, but I see how that could be an issue withe the Meraki MDM app not reporting back a location.
• We don't have Meraki access points, but we do have Meraki switches.. still not that helpful.
• Finally, none of this should matter when the device reports their GPS location via Lost Mode.  Unfortunately, the GPS location reported was being ignored.

[ekramer · Accepted solution]

We found the solution to our issue by checking the System Manager > Configure > General > Network Locations. As documented, the location we set for our public IP overrode all other methods of displaying the location of the device. Removing the override location allowed the lost device to display its GPS coordinates accurately.

I posit that this is an erroneous feature, as the devices' own GPS location should always take precedence over a calculated location based on IP. As noted in the documentation, IP-based geolocation is the last of the options that should be used to calculate a device's location.