Mobilizing the Enterprise

Our customers want to have similar configurations across all their iOS (iPad & iPhone) devices.  This includes settings like device PIN policies, iCloud backup or not, iCloud document sharing or not, WiFi setup including access point name and secret password, VPN setup including passwords and certificates, Exchange (or other email) server setup, and an initial set of corporate applications. Other stronger restrictions can be set if desired including disabling the ability to add apps, iTune user accounts, disable YouTube access, or even turn off the camera.

The new Apple Configurator now available in the Mac App Store makes these basic tasks very easy and very repeatable, allowing an admin to give the device to a user and let them easily finish up the personal parts of the enrollment such as personal email address and passwords.

I was recently at the CITE conference (Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise) where BYOD in the enterprise was a key discussion topic.  Distilling the best practices from the corporate discussions, the following three rules rise to the surface to ensure mobile device security:

1) Have a consistent PIN policy and utilize Exchange & Exchange Active Sync.  This allows remote locking and remote wiping of devices.

2) Ensure employees report lost or stolen devices. When a device is lost, first lock the device remotely to give the employee a chance to find it. After a few days, remote wipe the device to protect corporate & personal assets.  A remote lock and then a remote wipe encourages people to report lost devices sooner than later as it allows employees time to find them. These remote locking & wiping features are available via Outlook Web Access as discussed in an earlier post so employees could take these precautions themselves.

3) Have employees sign an agreement that ensures they & you follow these guidelines when using a mobile device for work.  This ensures you have permission to erase their device and they understand you are balancing corporate security with preservation of their personal data.

Apple’s new Configurator makes rolling out iOS devices easy and if you don’t have a Mac in your corporation, buying one simply to use the Configurator will save you significant time and effort ensuring a consistent iOS security profile across all your users.

Does your company’s intranet live on SharePoint? Do you want to present from your iPad? It’s easier than you might think.

We’ve tested a few different presentation options across the internet such as converting your file to a .pdf, and have concluded that professional presentations can be best accomplished on the iPad using these six easy steps.

These instructions include a sneak preview of our upcoming app, Coaxion, which we’re releasing for the iPad in a few weeks. Coaxion will simplify the presentations by providing direct SharePoint access to your presentations (and other documents) when you need them.

To Present, You’ll Need:

• Coaxion for the iPad to pull your presentation from SharePoint, releasing free soon in the App Store
• Keynote for iPad to play the presentation, $9.99 in App Store, not free but looks much better than presenting pdf files and allows you to edit your presentations
• Optionally, a VGA adaptor from the Apple Store to connect to most projectors, $29.00, it’s only compatible with some presentation programs including Keynote, otherwise you can present by placing your iPad on a desk or meeting table for viewing

Step One:  In Microsoft PowerPoint, save your presentation normally as a .ppt or .pptx file (alternatively, save your presentation normally in Keynote).

Step Two: Keep your presentation on your company’s intranet where you normally would.

Step Three: When ready, select your presentation from SharePoint using Coaxion for the iPad (an active wireless or 3G connection is needed at the time of pulling the file). 

Step Four: In the upper right corner, choose “Open In”, then “Keynote”, then in Keynote make any changes you need. 

Step Five: Set up for the presentation for viewing on a desk, table, or using the VGA adaptor for most projectors. 

Step Six: In Keynote, press play when you’re ready. 

What to Expect

You’ll preserve attractive slide transitions and the layout of your page for a slick, professional presentation. However, animations are slightly different if moving between PowerPoint and Keynote.

Keynote on the iPad allows one animation per object, and views text boxes as one object. If you’ve added multiple animations to text within a box, such as one-at-a-time list items, in Keynote they will arrive together on only one click. If this is an important issue for you, consider putting each list item into a separate text box and re-adding the separate animations.

Conclusion

By simply carrying your iPad with you and optionally, a cable, you can present from your iPad efficiently and professionally. Try it!

http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-17/business/29784700_1_stand-up-meetings-tennis-ball-agenda

Two people sitting in a room is a conversation. Three is a meeting, and things start to deteriorate from there. As the number of participants grows, the odds increase that PowerPoint slides will be shown, meaningless “action items’’ distributed, pet projects trotted out, oratorical skills exhibited, and BlackBerrys checked.

Last week, we expanded into a new office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood but we don’t yet have conference room furniture. I thought it would make our board meeting more difficult but Scott Kirsner’s timely advice on running a good meeting suggests it’s better we don’t get too comfortable:

1) Have an agenda and goal
2) Nix the chairs
3) Start at an odd time
4) Limit the size

As we have our meeting, we all use Coaxion for the iPad. This is a private meeting so social sharing doesn’t make sense. Coaxion makes it easy for private groups to share pre-reading, finalize the agenda, and refer to the data during our discussions. With Coaxion, I can share documents and product stats from our development team’s SharePoint site, opportunities from the Marketing Team’s SharePoint, and the board can bring in their ideas from Dropbox for the meeting pre-reading. A powerpoint-less and paperless meeting – what a concept!

During the meeting we can refer to the docs, updating them if needed, and track our decisions. Post the meeting, our decisions and follow up can be tracked within the Coaxion discussion thread. If someone had to call in via phone, they would have all the data they need to participate effectively.

No powerpoint (check), no paper (check), focused agenda (check), small team (check), no chairs (check), and start anytime (check)…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/ama-a-peek-into-the-future-of-google-docs/2011/06/13/AGnQtZTH_story.html

The GoogleDoc’s team solicited feedback from their users and it’s no surprise to us that the most requested features for any document management system are offline & mobile access. The desktop web browser was great for Enterprise 2.0 but we believe Enterprise 3.0 is all about mobile productivity beyond email. And with intermittent connections and high latency networks, caching and offline access to data is a key piece of this.

In light of  the RSA and Citibank breeches, security will always be critical and was another requested feature. Sharing is good but it should stop when the the need ends. And despite the rise of the social enterprise, we feel private communication remains a critical piece of execution in the enterprise – product launches won’t remain secret if plans are broadcast on the corporate social network.

These are some of the reasons we created Coaxion. Currently supporting Dropbox and SharePoint but let us know (feedback at moprise.com) what other corporate data sources you need to work with.

We have written about the unfortunate use of consumer channels for professional communication before and today another article from CNN makes the point more graphic:

10 Business Emails You Shouldn’t Send

10) Not using the right method of contact

Never message a business contact on Facebook. Seriously. Why? Because Facebook is where you go to look at pictures of people from high school when you’re drunk — there’s even a plug-in to prevent you from ruining your social media life whilst whiskey-soaked.

Sending a business-oriented message via Facebook is like wandering into a debauched party and expecting everyone to listen to you when you start talking about sales figures.

In a recent VentureBeat Q&A, an employer asked a lawyer “Can you fire someone for disparaging your company on Facebook?”   From a legal perspective, the First Amendment protects our right to state opinions that may be negative to our employers.  In fact, the lawyer mentions a November 2009 case that declared an employer cannot prohibit an employee from posting negative comments about the company on facebook.

While firing may not be allowed, in practice, we’ve all experienced, or witnessed second hand, soft forms of discrimination: being held to “rules” ignored for others, being passed over for bonuses or raises, or always seeming to draw the short straw for undesirable tasks.  And the back channel when someone checks references from previous employers can also be negative, preventing the next job.

From an employer’s perspective, these negative comments can be a real breech of trust, especially in the case of a small business where the owner and business are nearly indistinguishable.  Identifying with the goals of a large corporation is harder but certainly the day to day team you work with than can be penalized if your personal actions are viewed negatively by a corporate manager.

Do you use Facebook for business email and chat? Do you allow your online  personal and professional lives to mix in other ways?  How do you keep your personal and professional communication separate? We’d love to hear your stories at info@moprise.com and they could show up in this blog.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/technology/personaltech/24basics.html

The NYT discusses smartphone security and how you can take responsibility for protecting your data on your phone.  The data on your phone can be very valuable  -  contact info, credit card numbers, passwords, bank accounts,  and our internet identities. From a personal perspective, guarding this data is already beyond important.  But as our corporate lives move to our phones, partner, customer, and company data could also be exposed and this creates exponential opportunities for damage.

There have been two avenues for capturing data from your phone:

1) Remote – Malware and viruses steal data from your phone or

2) Direct – Losing your device allows someone else to access your data.

The NYT article summarizes the solutions available to protect yourself and your corporation across phones from different manufacturers.  From anti-virus software on Android to Find (and wipe) my phone from Apple’s MobileMe, individuals can take responsibility for protecting themselves and their corporation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/business/05digi.html <- A Strong Password Isn’t the Strongest Security

We manage tons of passwords across all our personal and business accounts.  The rules keep getting worse and worse.  The NYT article suggests a password concocted with complex rules – caps, numbers, special characters, no repeating digits or characters, unlike the previous 14, cannot be changed twice in a row, must be 8 characters or more – are less safe than simple dictionary words with proper security policies – account lock out if brute force attacks are detected and disallowing the same password among .01% or more users.  I look forward to having simple passwords.  Till then, here are my tricks to save my passwords:

LastPass is a free browser plug-in that works across IE, Safari, Chrome, and FireFox to save your account user names and passwords for all your sites. The data is saved on a LastPass server (under a password) so that it is up to date and accessible across all your browsers & personal computers. When you navigate to a site, it will automatically fill in your user name and password.  While some browsers have this feature built in, they don’t allow easy editing or sharing of the data across browsers & computers.

1Password is a wonderful iPhone application that allows you to save your password on a mobile phone. A 4 digit unlock code enforced by the application protects the passwords inside.  If you have a Macintosh, you can sync the passwords to your Mac and across other devices.  With 1Password, you don’t need to save your passwords to a central server to get cross device portability.  Unfortunately, the one thing 1Password doesn’t work with is Windows…