So I wrote my first App

And it was exhausting! I've never really been interested in coding, but with being in front a computer a lot more I've been able to spend a bit of time learning some new skills. It started off by wanting to learn some more about interacting with the Workspace ONE APIs, but I ended up wanting to add 'just that little bit more' until I ended up with something I'm somewhat happy with.

I am sure the code is very inefficient and I had to learn a lot of new concepts but what I've created is - Workpace ONE COVID-19 Notifier

What it allows you to do is obtain the latest COVID-19 Statistics for your Country and send a message to Workspace ONE users and devices.

Read on to see how I can see this being used!

Adding iOS Applications to Workspace ONE UEM

There are three main ways to get an application installed onto an iOS device. The most common way will be to install applications on devices directly from the iOS App Store, or if your organisation has developed their own application in-house or through a developer you can deploy this as an internal application.

Once the application is added to the Workspace ONE UEM Console it is will be available to install by end users. All pretty straight forward however there is more ways can we make this process even easier.

How to build your Workspace ONE Sandbox

Workspace ONE is incredibly powerful. But with so many features and functions, its no wonder people can get lost when working out where to start on configuring it to test with your scenarios in your environment.

As part of VMware Testdrive, other than getting access to a pre-configured testing environment and walkthroughs you also get a full fledged trial environment we refer to as a Sandbox.


This has all the capabilities of Workspace ONE where you can integrate it with all services to test it in your environment with real users and real devices.

So, this is where this guide comes in. Even I struggle to explain or give a place for my customers to go for all they need to get started. I'll add to the below information over time but this will be enough to get you started with Workspace ONE as part of a pilot or proof of concept.

Configuring Mobile SSO for iOS Devices in Workspace ONE

One of big differentiators we have with Workspace ONE is ability to use MobileSSO to drastically improve security and the user experience.

MobileSSO with Workspace ONE leverages certificates deployed to devices to seamlessly sign the user into the Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub and any federated SaaS services.

This solution requires both Workspace ONE UEM (to deploy and manage the lifecycle of the certificates) and Workspace ONE Access (to challenge the device for the certificate and authenticate the user). On iOS MobileSSO technically uses Kerberos by validating the certificate on the device and generating a Kerberos token the device can then present back for authentication.

In this post I'll discuss how to configure Workspace ONE Access for iOS MobileSSO and how to create a profile in Workspace ONE UEM to deploy the required certificate and approve the domains and applications that can use it.

Generating an Apple Push Notifications Certificate to enroll and manage Apple Devices

Most of the time it seems like magic that Apple devices 'just work'. However, there is one fundamental service that makes this happen - the Apple Push Notification Service. This is a set of services that Apple use (and that Apple devices leverage) to communicate with MDM, App Store, Email infrastructure etc.

The part that Mobility Administrators need to do to utilise this in Workspace ONE is generate their own Apple Push Notification Services certificate to secure traffic and communicate with Apple.

It essentially allows the entire mobility infrastructure to communicate freely in a "push" fashion rather than on-demand or schedule.

Now the important part here is that this certificate needs to be renewed every 12 months. I say important because if you don't renew it and let it expire, you have to reenroll every Apple device (manually) for them to function properly again.

Enough chit-chat, lets generate an APNs certificate and upload it to the Workspace ONE UEM Console.