A Brief Guide to the control Logic of XML settings

The simple control logic of the ManagdWALplus XML configuration file is explained here. Please also refer to the alphabetical list of XML file keys and values for a very up-to-the point brief overview of keys and values of the configuration files. This list has pointers to more in-depth explanations of most of the different keys and values.

OK- so how is the ManagdWALplus app controlled?

There are two main sources:

  • Bundled keys and values in the app itself. Most of these will serve as fairly decent and well thought-out defaults. You will certainly need to modify at least some of these, however.
  • Configuration provided by you in XML files, with keys / value pairs defining the particular behaviour you demand of the app.

When remotely controlling the behaviour of ManagdWALplus, the XML keys and/or values of the app is the name of the game. You can often rely on most of the defaults, hopefully given sensibly defined values from us at Royal Cloud Solutions. One example of a setting is the screensaver timeout of the app, typically of great use when the app is run in single app mode and/or ordinary kiosk mode. Using defaults, after five minutes of non-use, the screen is dimmed by the app to whatever low screensaver light level is defined, with a default of 1 percent as minimum. If you can live with these defaults settings, you are all set and ready to go in regard to this setting. If not, add the keys and values to your XML file, and push it.

So why not just push all settings, then, you may ask? Not all enterprise mobility management (EMM), modern (mobile) device management (MDM), mobile application management (MAM) or unified endpoint management (UEM) will accept that much XML data, or uplink capacity may restrain size under given circumstances although the size will rarely some kilobytes, with a theoretical maximum around 30 kilobyte. In fact, we have shoehorned the XML keys and values already, trying to minimize the size, using abbreviated keys and defaults.

Just to repeat: There are default settings for all defined XML keys/values, and absolutely all of them can be overridden. Some must be overriden, as explained below, to put the ManagdWALplus into useful service.

All right, on to the business, with an important definition first:

What are web buttons (also sometimes known to insiders as qLIs)? These are the tabs, buttons (or in the future perhaps menus or similar) that the user selects to get a specific action, such as loading a web page or a (remote or local) web service. These buttons lie at the heart of ManagdWALplus, including the control of it with title (text) and url, and if you like, with font type, size and color.

If you run the app barebone, with no XML settings whatsoever, you will be watching this and other information about the app, in English, together with the associated web resources necessary to get up and running.

The magic happens when you configure the web buttons (at least for one language with the matching links, and push it via the MDM server: Now you see your own material, distributed among the buttons you have defined. Web selection button attributes such as font size, font type and font color will however be inherited from defaults.

Another quintessential (but optional) feature is the heartbeat. When enabled, the app will send a “I am alive” message to a logging server, typically running Logstash or similar that offers a REST/JSON endpoint to capture the heatbeat messages. Once enabled, you can transfer a very simple statistics as well: Has a user touched the screen, or not? This may come in handy to simply check whether the device is in use, or not, down to the granularity of which web button has been used to browse through the associated web pages, if enabled. If for instance, the case is a chemical laboratory offering a chemical index, local info and emergency info, the number of screen touches (but not any details of what has been viewed within the given web button) since last heartbeat will be collected and transferred, if enabled.

About usage statistics: Note that this is NOT an app designed for personal use. The data collected thus are to be used as anonymous usage data for a given group of persons, such as students using a lab. When enabled, the app will, if started in pure kiosk mode or single app autonomous mode, alert the user of this anonymous statistics collection every time a new session has started, adjusting session timers to you specific case.