Manage Profiles

An Open Mobile profile is a set of customization options that determine the features, policy settings, and behavior of the Open Mobile client. Your enterprise can maintain any number of profiles, each addressing the needs of some portion of your user base. For example, one profile could be maintained for your sales department, and another profile could be maintained for your telecommuting workforce.

Each profile is assigned a profile ID, a version number, and a status.

A profile template is a collection of pre-configured settings that can be used as the basis for new profile. Using profile templates to create new profiles can speed profile creation and standardize the user experience.

To create a new profile, click the Create button in the top-right corner. For more information, click on the following link:

• Create a New Profile

You can search your profiles by Profile Name to locate a particular profile. The search is case-insensitive, and will return all profiles the names of which begin with the text you enter.

To search by profile name:

1. In the Search Profiles box, enter the name (or partial name) for which you wish to search.
2. Click the Search icon. All profiles matching your search are presented.

Next to each profile there is a button marked Select an action that will open a drop-down list with the following actions:

• Manage
• Favorite
• Download
• Profile Subscription
• View History

You can view or edit the configuration settings for a profile by selecting the Manage action.

A profile’s previous versions are recorded on the Open Mobile Portal and can be managed as required. This list does not include profile versions you have deleted.

To view previous versions of a profile:

1. Click Configuration | Manage Profiles.
2. On the list of existing profiles, select the profile you wish to view.
3. Click +. The list expands to show all previous versions of the profile.

A profile’s version number will indicate the profile’s status in its lifecycle—whether it is draft, test, or production. Profile version numbers take the form <production version>.<test version>, where <production version> is an integer, and <test version> is a three-digit number.

• Production profile numbers end in .000.
• If the version number ends in a number other than .000, the profile is a draft or test profile.

For example, a profile with version number 3.000 is a production profile, and profile with version number 3.004 is a test profile (in fact, the fourth version of that particular test profile).

As a profile proceeds through its lifecycle (from draft, to test, to production), it is automatically assigned a version number.

• Editing and saving a test profile will create a new test version, and will automatically increment the test version number by .001.
• Publishing a test profile to production will increment the <production version> number by 1.000 and reset the <test version> number to .000.

Profile version numbering is automatic as you move it through its lifecycle. A version number cannot be manually assigned to a profile.

For example, a newly created profile is automatically assigned a status of Test and a version number of 0.001. As the profile is tested and edited, and successive versions are created, the version number is automatically incremented by .001 to 0.002, 0.003, and so on. Finally, when the test profile is published to production, the profile version is automatically changed to 1.000. Later successive edits of this production profile (for testing) would then increment that number to 1.001, 1.002, 1.003, and so on.

Production profiles will not be upgraded to a new profile version unless a new production version is available (that is, a new profile ending in .000).

For example, a user has profile version 2.000 (a production profile). The Open Mobile administrator is testing new versions of this profile and generates test versions 2.001 and 2.002. A user attempting to upgrade the 2.000 profile would be informed that no profile upgrade was available (because the only profile versions available are test profiles). To enable a profile upgrade of a production profile, one of these test versions could be pushed to production as version 3.000. The creation of a production version would allow users with 2.000 to upgrade to 3.000.

You can view and recover deleted profiles by clicking on the drop-down list in the top-left corner of the screen and selecting Show Deleted Profiles. For more information, click on the following link:

• Profile Recovery

A favorite profile is the profile you plan to distribute to most of your users. You can favorite (or unfavorite) a profile for each platform and class by clicking on the star that appears next to it on the Manage Profiles page.

Favorite Profiles and the Profile Finder: Favorite profiles work in conjunction with the Profile Finder for each platform. The Profile Finder enables users to activate a client for any platform, as long as they have any valid Open Mobile profile ID.

A user with an existing Open Mobile profile (for example, for the Windows client) may activate Open Mobile on another platform (such as an Android phone) using the profile ID for the Windows client. Upon entering this ID into Open Mobile on the Android phone, the Profile Finder would then download the favorite Android profile to the user's phone. The user's phone would then be able to use Open Mobile, fully activated.

There are four types of stars to mark favorite profiles:

• Red Star: marks a favorite profile (in production)
• Gray Star: marks a favorite profile (not published to production yet)
• Empty Star: marks all other profiles (not the favorite profile)
• No Star: marks profiles with a PIN (which cannot be a favorite profile)

This feature allows Open Mobile to silently authenticate users so they don’t need to enter (or even remember) a username or password. To enable this feature, contact an iPass admin or Customer Care.

• If automatic credential assignment is enabled, then a favorite profile must be selected for each platform that has a profile in production.
• If automatic credential assignment is enabled and a production profile is marked as Favorite, it shouldn't be deleted.

Go to: Portal Guide > Configuration Tab