Setting up Hexnode for a mixed OS small business – help!Solved

The trick is to tackle your platform integrations before you even touch a device.

For your office staff on Apple gear, you need to set up APNs (Apple Push Notification service). You basically download a certificate signing request from Hexnode, upload it to Apple’s portal, and bring the .pem certificate file back. Pro tip from experience: please use a shared corporate Apple ID, not your personal one, or it’ll be a nightmare to renew if you ever leave! For the Android tablets, jump over to the Android Enterprise tab and bind a corporate Google account. This gives you the Managed Google Play Store so you can push apps silently.

As for your field guys, that’s the fun part. Under the Policies tab, create a new Global Security Policy. You can enforce your passcode rules and push your office Wi-Fi there, but you’ll want to dive heavily into the Restrictions section. You can explicitly block Factory Reset and Account Modification. Once that policy is applied to their tablets, they physically won’t be able to tinker with those settings anymore.

We use Google Workspace for all our company emails and accounts. Do I really need to sit down and manually type out all 25 user profiles into Hexnode just to send them their BYOD enrollment links? Also, for those company-owned Android tablets, what’s the fastest way to enroll them? I’d love to avoid manually configuring each tablet if possible, especially since we plan on buying a dozen more next month.

You can just go to the Admin tab, select Google Workspace, and sync your entire directory directly into Hexnode. It pulls everyone in automatically. From there, you can just blast out the BYOD enrollment invites via email in bulk.

For the company-owned Androids, you want to use Android Zero-Touch Enrollment (or Samsung Knox Mobile Enrollment if you’re buying Galaxy tabs). When you buy your next batch of tablets from an authorized reseller, they get assigned to your portal automatically. The moment your field guys unbox them and connect to Wi-Fi, Hexnode takes over, provisions the device, and drops that restrictive policy you just made right onto it without you having to touch a single screen. It’s incredibly satisfying to watch. You’ve got this!