About Mobile Device Inventory (MDI)

Mobile Device Inventory (MDI) gathers information from mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

You must enroll all mobile devices so that HEAT can audit them. After you enroll a mobile device, HEAT creates a mobile device CI record and inventories the software and hardware. Go to the CI workspace to view the information. Enrolling your mobile device also allows the administrator to send certain commands to it, for example, to start an audit or to update the wifi configuration.

The system consists of the MDI service (a server component), and the MDI client application that is installed on the mobile devices.

The MDI service uses Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) and Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) to communicate with the MDI client and send it commands or data. All data and commands are sent to the mobile devices using these services as mandated and in conformance with the requirements of Apple, Inc., and Google, Inc.

However, any communication from the mobile device (client) to the server is sent directly without the need for APNS or GCM. Therefore, the server that hosts the MDI service must:

• Be able to send and receive data over the Internet.
• Communicate using only SSL which requires the use of SSL certificates.

Prerequisites for Using Mobile Device Inventory

Before you begin installation, ensure that you have the following to manage iOS devices:

• An SSL certificate issued for a registered domain by a trusted Certificate Authority such as Verisign or Comodo.

• A root certificate from the same trusted Certificate Authority.
• A valid Apple ID.

For more information about deploying MDI, see Deploying the Mobile Device Inventory (MDI) Service and Configuring Mobile Device Inventory (MDI) Settings.