Use case: Environment- health and safety (EHS) compliance on labs

One major university in Scandinavia has a large number of laboratories, and are under stringent law and requlations to have always up-to-date information on how to safely use the substances (chemicals) present. A chemical substance database (originally EcoOnline, later Workplace Safety) provides the substance hazard information (security data sheets, SDS), using standard HTML web pages with customized links for each lab.

Since personal computer equipment is prohibited on the labs at the university (along with other personal items, food etc.) a robust and affordable way of displaying the information on the labs was sought for.

Over 300 Ipads from Apple Inc. were aquired as devices for display of chemical substance hazard information, along with other environment- health and safety (EHS) information at the labs in questiion. The iPads where mounted on magnetic mound stands in the labs, and ManagdWALplus was adapted to suit this use case as a locked-down, remotely managed and monitored web browser.

The main requirements leading to the development and use of ManagdWALplus instead of using an ordinary web browser were amongst others:

• Easy to use, always on substance database access, tamper proof and locked down to avoid other uses.
• Assuring that a defined lab-dependent startup-page of the chemical substance database) is presented to all new users, always, and in the same manner
• Requiring little to no local management, and for necessary managment using standard endpoint management systems such as Intune.
• Alert helpdesk or other support personell if the service should stop working, and proactively when possible such as with defect charging, no mains power, unstable network connection etc.
• High up-time, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, year in and year out.
• Instant-on use, without any unnecessary turn-on or login procedure.

ManagdWALplus solves the challenges using:

• Simple centralized per-device setup of device and ManagdWALplus web browser app, using any standard EMS (endpoint management system), and automatically going to startup web pages after a per-device defineable time of non-use.
• Intune (and potentially other standard EMS/MDM/UEM) systems) supporting centralized device and ManagdWALplus management.
• Alerts provided to those responsible for the solution, using a log monitoring service with automatic fault detection and alerting, when charger, battery, network or device becomes unstable or fails. This is implemented by listening to heartbeats from ManagdWALplus in a LogStash instance.
• High up-time assisted by monitoring device (battery status, memory usage and so on), and by a carefully crafted app.
• Instant-on supported by turning light off display in extended periods of non-use, with instant-on once operated such as touching the display, or pressing any buttons.