android intent for chrome custom tab from lockdown screen
- 21 February 2018
- SOTI MobiControl - Android
9 Answers- 0 Upvote
- 4 Followers
9 Answers
Please clarify your requirements. In particular,
1. Your device models/brand and platform?
2. Are you limited to use Chrome, and not the "default" browser (depends on device brand/model) nor Soti Surf secure browser?
3. Do you want your users to be able to access any web sites other than the target web-mail in the same browser instance after it has been started?
Hi
1. device Honeywell CT50 - Android
2. limited to use chrome for one of our web apps
3. and no, we need to restrict the users access to the web apart from what we want them the be on.
thanks
With your third requirements, could you confirm that your web app can configure Chrome to kiosk mode so that device end-user cannot enter any URL nor use history/shortcut etc. in default Chrome's UI to get the browser to sites other than what you intend?
If not, why not have a go with Soti Surf. You can easily set kiosk mode, bookmark, many security related restrictions, authentication, timeout threshold, etc. You can test by using
surf:// your_URL
to see if your web app can run properly on Surf.
If yes, then I assume your web apps include plug-ins, javascripts, or very fancy framework(s) to create the kiosk mode and other security related features. In that case, the web app developer should be able to use cookies or other mechanism to avoid having many tabs or browser instances when the MobiControl kiosk item is pressed multiple times. In any case, you may check if you can set Chrome to be your default browser, and then try using
intent:https://your_URL#Intent;action=android.intent.action.VIEW;end
to see if you still get the same problem.
thanks,
we have had a play with soti suf but a lot of the elements don't work when we tested it, we ideally want something like the https:// option from the soti help pages,
https:// - Opens a secured webpage from within the lockdown.
as this does what we need minus the fact that if a user logs in to the webmail and doesn't logout , when the link is open it loads that users webmail , so we need each link press to be its own tab that doesn't save cookies so as soon as the user presses the back button or home, its back to square one.
thanks
I presume you've tried
https://Your_URL
and found that your web apps also have problems running properly by the Webkit engine (the default renderer in most, if not all, Android devices.)
So, maybe one way is to see if your web app developers can clean up their codes a bit to use more standard features supported by webkit or by Surf.
One more thing worths considering is to add javascripts in the MobiControl kiosk menu to fix your multiple instance problem. However, as I don't know exactly your use case, nor your web-app architecture or codes,I am not sure if this approach is feasible or not.
Could you instead launch a SOTI script from the lockdown screen that first kills and wipes the chrome application (thereby closing any existing tabs and clearing saved passwords) before then calling the same intent?
Script:
kill_application com.android.chrome
wipeapplication com.android.chrome
sendintent - a "https://<URL>#Intent;action=android.intent.action.VIEW;end"
Hi Oliver,
Raymond is correct in many of his assessments of the web browsers that are available and that SOT Surf usually can provide the most options for more granular control of the browsing experience.
Based on your response however it seems that chrome/webkit (default browser) has been able to somewhat accommodate your requirements.
I have attached a screenshot of the Features/ Security options that are available in SOTI Surf please clarify if you have tried using them and what the outcome was.
Technical Support | SOTI Inc. |1.905.624.9828 | support@soti.net | www.soti.net |
I have created a script called test with the below then from the lockdown menu item i set it to script://test but i keep getting 'scrip execution failed'
Let's assume your script has no error or problem. The mostly like cause the device cannot run your script is that your script file cannot be located when you specify your kiosk item to be
script://test
As given in my earlier answer at
https://discussions.soti.net/thread/android-launch-able-soti-script-shortcut-on-soti-lockdown/
I believe you should specify your script path properly. My answer is still the same, which I repeat here:
The tricky part is to reference the path to your script file on your device brand/model, which might have a different file hierarchy for different device brand/model. However, all Android devices have the default "download" directory in the on-board Flash, which should be easily referenced with MobiControl macro %sdcard%/Download. Please note that the macro %sdcard% here does not refer to external add-on SD-card, which might be referenced with another macro, %removablesdcard%, for some device brands/models in Mobicontrol v13.3.0.3851+ & v14.0.2+ according to the latest Soti online info.
So, if you have a script abc.cmd in the default "Download" directory, you should have the following for your lockdown menu item:
script://%sdcard%/Download/abc.cmd
Some devices/firmware/webview engine might use/interpret \ as path delimiter. Please verify on each device model you are using.