Pushing a contact list via SM for BYOD-IOS devices

[KillxxxKam]

Hello All!

Our team is doing pros and cons or going completely Boyd or complete cooperate devices. One thing that we cannot find much resource on is pushing contacts list via systems manager. We see the contact payload but no real documentation on how to deploy this or subsequent needs in order for this payload to work. 

Can anyone point us in the right direction or if its even possible in a BYOD environment?

thanks!

[PhilipDAth]

I haven't seen this done.

Usually, it is done via the email platform, such as Office 365 and using Outlook on the mobile platform.

[KillxxxKam]

Right, up until now, we’ve been hand jamming creds for our users to sync the global contact list via exchange using the native mail client for each device or platform. Find it hard to think that there’s not a way to automate a contact list even if its syncing to a managed app such as contacts. 

[PhilipDAth]

Forget the native email client.  Been there.  Tried that.  Not worth trying to use it.

Change to using Outlook on Android and iOS so you can get much better integration.

Leave the native email client for people to use for their personal email.

[BlakeRichardson]

BYOD in a corporate environment is a pain, if your company can afford it I would supply fully managed devices. Make config and app rollout much easier in the long run.

[KillxxxKam · Accepted solution]

Hey Guys! I think I might have found something that could work if anyone else comes across this in the near future. All of this is referencing Cisco Meraki Systems Manager but all the steps Ive found translate to all of the big players in MDM. 

There is a payload titled "Managed App Config"  where you can configure background actions to run upon install to ensure contacts sync the way I was expecting too. There are "Keys" you can assign to automate specific actions. In my case I need outlook contacts to sync with the native contacts application regardless of platform. 

Deploying this Managed App config using this key "com.microsoft.outlook.Contacts.LocalSyncEnabled". Using this I was able to get the desired result across most android devices  with the exception of out of date models. "Cannot confirm on IOS, will update when I know more."

[KillxxxKam]

UPDATE!

I can now confirm that this batch key works as expected on IOS as well in both BYOD and fully managed environments!