Back in February of last year, we issued a blog post on device location reporting, a topic that often comes up among our AirWatch users. Last week, we received the following email from a client working to troubleshoot an issue that arose when trying to configure this popular functionality.

Hi Randy,

As per your article, I have set up for automatic request to check in for devices. I can see devices last seen but when I got to the location tab it says the device has not reported any location to AirWatch.

Regards,
M.P.

In case you run into a similar issue, we wanted to share some additional tips for ensuring that you can track your devices via GPS Location Services as noted in our response to the client:

Hello M.P.,

I am glad to hear that you read the article and applied it to your environment. There are a couple of things that could be causing the disconnect:

  • The Privacy settings in All Settings/Devices and Users/General/Privacy must be set properly for your use types (either BYOD or Company Owned).
  • The Agent settings for the device OS (Apple or Android) should be set to have the Background Refresh checkbox checked (for example, All Settings/Devices and Users/Apple/Apple iOS/Agent).
  • Location Services must be turned on for the device. For Apple devices, tap Settings on the home screen and then Privacy/Location Services, making sure that the AirWatch Agent is listed under the “Share My Location” section. Unless you have your devices managed under a DEP profile, you won’t be able to mandate that the user doesn’t turn that off on his/her own.

I hope the above helps. If you have any further issues or any questions regarding details, you may consider creating a support ticket with AirWatch.

Randy

Randy Crenshaw, VP – Mobile Technology
Tech Orchard, LLC

Do you have a question about your AirWatch console we can answer? Or, are you interested in learning tips about a specific mobility issue? Email Randy at randy@techorchard.com for assistance and you could be featured in an upcoming blog post.