After talking in general about Praim products and solutions and, above all, about the business needs and requirements they can satisfy, it’s time to go into more detail about some of the most important and interesting features of ThinMan, the centralized endpoint management console. In this article of the #Praim4Beginners series we’ll talk about what “Configuration Profiles” and “Device Policies” are and how these features can integrate with other Praim solutions.
Therefore, a brief excursus is needed on what Praim’s client software can do: Agile (agent for Windows devices) and ThinOX (firmware). In fact, through the configuration interface of the two solutions, it’s possible to modify numerous configurations: from the type of connection to remote resources (via VDI or via browser, for example), to the setting and personalization of security measures aimed at regulating the access of each individual user (or groups); from connecting different local devices to using and updating certificates; from network configuration and setup, to the Wake on LAN (or WOL), which manages the switching on and off of local and remote devices. After configuring and customizing the workstation, thanks to the Configuration Profiles and Device Policies functions of ThinMan, it will be possible to replicate everything quickly and easily on other devices.
Profiles and Policies, what’s the difference?
Basically, Configuration profiles represent the set of all the individual configurations (or settings) of a device; Device policies, on the other hand, are the rules that establish which configurations (which profiles) must be considered and to which (other) devices these must be applied. In short, it could be said that Configuration Profiles represent the “what” and Device Policies the “how”.
Configuration Profile
The first step to use this feature in ThinMan is to create, using Agile or ThinOX, the desired configuration of the endpoint. Within the ThinMan console, simply select the device just configured and choose the menu item “Offline configuration – Receive from device” to allow the configuration set in Agile (or ThinOX) to be imported directly into the console. It will later be possible, based on the imported configuration, to create a Configuration Profile and set the related Device Policies (from the “Add New Device Policy” menu).
Device Policy
Once the steps described above have been performed, the Device Policy will require some further actions in order to be automatically distributed and used by other devices as well.
In fact, further settings are possible within the policies:
- Activation of user authentication
- Definition of access criteria and the ways in which this must take place
- How the policy is applied to devices
- Choice of which devices (or groups of devices) should receive the policy
At this point everything will be ready for automatically replicate the configuration (and the options set with the policy) on the desired devices.
Policies and Profiles – good to know…
Policies and Profiles can also be applied to different devices as long as they are equipped with the same Praim software solution. Therefore, devices equipped with the ThinOX operating system can have the same configuration even if with different firmware versions, as well as Windows devices of a different nature can be configured by using the Agile4PC agent.
In ThinMan it’s possible to view the version of the product “family” by expanding the Configuration Profile and selecting the Details tab in the Properties section using the right mouse button. Here it is also possible to centrally modify the properties of the ThinOX client configuration, a useful function also in the case of certificate renewal or change in the method of connection to remote services.
Conclusion
The Configuration Profiles and Device Policy features are available on the entire range of Praim hardware and software solutions and are a convenient and fast method for effectively managing the entire IT infrastructure.
Download the trial of ThinMan, ThinOX4PC and Agile4PC to test all the benefits of Praim centralized management on your infrastructure.
