Are you using the SOTI lockdown or Zebra Enterprise Home Screen as well or are the devices not locked down? It is easy to create a shortcut on the home screen when the devices are locked down with one of those utilities. 

The simplest way to have a bookmark to start an app (Soti SURF in your case) to carry out an operation ( browse a specific URL in your case) is to create a shortcut on the Android homescreen  to send an Android's intent specifying the required operation to the targeted app.  This requires

1. checking  if the target app supports any intent to carry out the required operations, and the name and arguments of such intent(s) 

2.  creating a customized app to make a shortcut that generate the required "intent"

Step 2 is rather straightforward if step 1 is successful.  In the past, I did successfully completed the above steps  for our MobiControl customers some customized apps which create shortcuts for some other browser and VPN client apps.  I have used similar approach to guess what the intent action/arguments could be for Soti SURF,  but so far could not confirm if it supports the required intent, and the associated  arguments if there is such intent implemented. 

If Soti support team confirm that there is no such intent implemented now, then maybe your only temporary solution now is to configure Soti SURF payload with

1. Homescreen enabled and the home Website configured to be your target URL

2.  Website filtering enabled ( and just whitelist your target URL or other associated entries) if you want to restrict end-user from browsing to other URL's

3. Kiosk mode enabled to hide the bottom-bar or app-menu, if required.

Hi David,

I got a prompt reply from Soti support team and got point (1) solved.  There is an intent to start the Soti Surf browser to go directly to a specific URL, and the action name is "Intent.ACTION_VIEW" rather than the ones I tried earlier.

So one can make Soti Surf browse www.soti.net by sending the following script command:

    sendIntent -a "intent:https://www.soti.net#Intent;action=Intent.ACTION_VIEW;component=net.soti.surf/net.soti.surf.ui.activities.SplashActivity;end"

To get a shortcut with your preferred icon on the device home-screen, you need to develop a small Android program to generate the shortcut with the above intent and the required icon resource bind.  You can then use MobiControl to  push this app and execute it to generate the required shortcut(s) on the devices you target.

If you use some ready-make apps/launcher to create such shortcut(s), you probably can't deploy it remotely, nor efficient enough for large number of devices.  

Hi David,

While creating an apk to use my suggested intent to create a custom bookmark for Soti Suf  takes only a few minutes if one has the skill and toolset, it can be difficult for most normal MobiControl administrators.  Unfortunately, I can't send you our source codes due to licensing and business reasons.  However,  I have just made a feature request  for you guys on Soti's partner site to add Android webclip payload in future versions.