Google announces Android for Work

[Arthur]

Click the links below for more info.

 

Source: Google for Work Blog / google.com/work/android

 

Over a billion people today carry Android smartphones—devices that are more powerful than the computers we used just a few years ago.

 

For many, these phones have become essential tools to help us complete important work tasks like checking email, editing documents, reviewing sales pipelines and approving deals. But for the majority of workers, smartphones and tablets are underutilized in the workplace. Their business and innovation potential remain largely untapped.

 

Today we're announcing the Android for Work program to tap into that potential. With a group of partners, we're helping businesses bring more devices to work by securing, managing and innovating on the Android platform.

 

Android for Work features four key technology components:

 

• Work profiles – We’ve built on the default encryption, enhanced SELinux security enforcement and multi-user support in Android 5.0, Lollipop to create a dedicated work profile that isolates and protects work data. IT can deploy approved work apps right alongside their users' personal apps knowing their sensitive data remains secured. People can use their personal apps knowing their employer only manages work data and won’t erase or view their personal content.
  
• Android for Work app – For devices running Ice Cream Sandwich through Kitkat, or that don’t run work profiles natively, we've created the Android for Work app. The app, which delivers secure mail, calendar, contacts, documents, browsing and access to approved work apps, can be completely managed by IT.
  
• Google Play for Work – Google Play for Work allows businesses to securely deploy and manage apps across all users running Android for Work, simplifying the process of distributing apps to employees and ensuring that IT approves every deployed app.
  
• Built-in productivity tools – For everyday business tasks, we’ve created a suite of business apps for email, contacts and calendar, which supports both Exchange and Notes and provides document editing capabilities for documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
  

 

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[Arthur]

The following article contains some very useful instructions on how to setup Android for Work for your Google Apps domain. As the author mentions, it is needlessly complicated.

 

A review of Android for Work: Dual-persona support comes to Android « Ars Technica

 

To get setup, we'll first need to dive into one of the most complicated, confusing, unintuitive interfaces Google has ever birthed: The Google Apps Dashboard. While a lot of the documentation falls back on the old cop-out of "contact your administrator," Google Apps is marketed toward small businesses. Theoretically, a normal person should be able to do this—I am the administrator in this test setup.

 

The gallery above shows off the setup process. Basically, after adding Android for Work as a "service" to Google Apps, it takes a bunch of Android for Work settings and scatters them across the various dashboard sections. Then it's up to the user to go on a scavenger hunt and discover all the newly added Android for Work setup sections that have been hidden in various nooks and crannies in the dashboard. If you haven't guessed from the size of the gallery, setup is a really awful experience.

 

Android for Work desperately needs either its own page full of all the settings or a setup wizard. Right now you have to visit three different sections and copy/paste a security code from one section of Google Apps to another just to set up Android for Work. Throughout it all, there is never any on-screen guidance about what you should be doing next. Over and over again, I was left asking "What do I do now?" when trying get through the setup.