How to configure Exchange ActiveSync profile for Non-Samsung Android devices?

Description

The Exchange server is widely used for managing corporate e-mails in organizations. Hosting the Exchange provides a centralized database to back up e-mails and ensures data security. Apart from managing e-mails, the Exchange is used for bringing contacts together, managing calendars, among others. To ensure that the corporate data from Exchange is available on your employees' devices you can configure the Exchange ActiveSync profile. This lets you pre-configure settings for your managed devices, to automatically sync mail, calendar, notes, and tasks from Exchange with specific e-mail clients present on the devices. To configure Exchange ActiveSync profile for Android devices, follow the steps given below.

Pre-requisites

• Non-Samsung Android devices running 5.0 or later versions, the device must be enrolled either as Profile Owner/Device Owner.
• If the client app to be used is Gmail, the app must distributed to the devices prior to associating the EAS profile, in the case of Samsung devices running Android versions below 8.0.

Steps

To create an Exchange ActiveSync profile,

• Click on the Device Mgmt tab and Select Profiles from the left pane.
• Click on the Create Profile drop-down and select Android.
• Select Exchange ActiveSync and configure the profile by following the steps given here. Save and Publish the profile.
• Distribute the profile as explained here.

Once the profile is distributed to the device, a notification informing the same is shown to the user. On clicking the notification, Gmail and Google Play Services get automatically updated to the latest versions, if need be. To complete the configuration, the user needs to enter the password of the Exchange account. If certificate-based authentication has been enabled, the user will not be prompted to enter the password and can directly access the Exchange data. It is thus recommended to set up a strong password on the device to ensure the access to the device is secure.

As the Exchange contains confidential corporate data, securing access to the server is essential to prevent data loss. The access to Exchange can be protected using the Conditional Exchange Access feature of MDM. A Conditional Exchange Access policy can be configured to ensure that Exchange is accessed only from managed devices and not from unauthorized devices. Before configuring Conditional Exchange Access, it is recommended to configure the Exchange ActiveSync profile.