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Question

Device enrolled in different company

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 26, 2024
3 replies
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Got a strange one; i have a Honeywell Ct60, android 10.0, that i have had for years as a test device. This week i began testing a new app update. i wiped the device and enrolled it into my MDM, WorkSpace One, i noticed about an hour or so later it automatically wiped. I thought strange, but must have been a fluke, so i enrolled it again. Same thing re-enrolled it and the next day it was reset. i went to enroll it today and was actually able to pay attention to it and shortly after enrollment a notification popped up stating it was going to reset within and hour message was from "Device Setup", well i'm thinking i don't have that setup in my config, so i look further and found that it was being managed by another company, Publix Grocery, and i am in a health system in a completely different state. Any ideas on how my device got added to their EMM?

M

Moombas

Level 4.4: KitKat

In general you should get in contact with them.
Normally this shouldn't been able to happen as in this case Zero-Touch Portoal takes places which is based on IMEI (or SNR if there's no IMEI). But the devices are uploaded by a reseller.

So it could be that the their reseller did something wrong but in general you should contact them to clarify this.

P

parfect12Author

New Member

i talked to Publix and they were just curious how i got the device, thinking i got a "lost" device of theirs. They suggested calling Google to see about tracking down the S/N on their end to see if it can be moved. Happen to know what number i cancall for that area.

M

mattdermody

Level 3.0: Honeycomb

Where did you acquire the device from? Not try to accuse of anything malicious here but if you bought it from the gray market (e.g. Ebay) then it might have been one of their devices originally. That or a reseller fat fingered an IMEI for another device. The CT60 is just a likely device for Publix to be using in their operations so it wouldn't surprise me if it was theirs at some point.

P

parfect12Author

New Member

We either purchased it through Lawson who was the vendor for the purpose we were using them with or our reseller CDW could have been straight from Honeywell, i'm not involved in that process. I think i remember them scrambling to get devices to us so it may have bene a device Publix tested and sent back. as i said above i've had the device for years. just looking to get management of my device back.

J

jasonbayton

Level: 4.1: Jelly bean

Lawson or CDW would be your initial point of contact. CDW I know are resellers for ZT and can raise it with Google as a partner with a proof of purchase. Google doesn't have a ZT helpline to call, so through a partner is always first port of call.

M

mattdermody

Level 3.0: Honeycomb

I actually have encountered this now twice in the past week in two different customer environments. In both cases customers received Zebra devices back from repair that were enrolled in the ZTE portal for other companies! This resulted in them auto-reseting and basically being worthless. I am not sure how this cross pollination between companies is occurring but this is a major flaw in the ZTE system. It seems entirely too easy for a reseller to fat finger the wrong series of device serials when inputting them into the portal and falsely register the devices to the wrong end customer. The serial numbers are sequential coming from the factory and in the examples I saw it was a sequential series of device serials that were incorrectly registered to the wrong company. It is maddening that this is even possible. Another strike against ZTE for me.

M

Moombas

Level 4.4: KitKat

Hi Matt,

i think the issue is somehow different in case what you describe.
If you send Zebra devices to repair, the owner has to remove them entirely from the ZTP (that's what Zebra is requesting in their repair policies). They did check in the past (i don't know how or maybe just because of the behavior of the device) if they are still in there and then don't repair.

As said, i don't know if they were able to check. But in our case they didn't repair then and we got the devices back or informed by the repair center.

The reason is simple: It may happen that the main PCB (which is holding the serialnumber or IMEI) maybe swapped entirely and later being repaired and reused.

And thats the moment your described behavior can happen if no one checked if the device, where the main PCB should be swapped, is registered in the ZTP and need to be removed/replaced with the new SNR/IMEI.

I think it's not "fat fingers" (always) but more likely not following the repair agreements.

Just as a note: We also needed then always write to our resellers the old and new SNR/IMEI to get them replaced in our ZTP (because we encounter similar procedure for other manufacturers as well).

@Google: It would be nice if manufacturers could do that directly and (sry) forced to do that in case of a main PCB swap where IMEI/SNR is changing and not the old one flashed onto during repair process.

M

mattdermody

Level 3.0: Honeycomb

I think you may be right. Upon further investigation these were devices that were correctly enrolled into the right ZTE portal originally but then were not uninenrolled correctly before being reallocated to a different customer.

Agreed that the Manufacturers handling these repair contracts should be able to manage the Zero Touch enrollments on behalf of the end customers while devices are in repair. Otherwise we're stuck with the friction of having to deregister devices before they are sent in for repair. That is currently a bottleneck since the people with access to ZTP are almost never the same people that are processing repairs at a local site level in a distributed environment like retail stores or warehouses.

KBAs like this illustrate this point:

https://supportcommunity.zebra.com/s/article/Deregister-a-Device-from-Android-Zero-Touch-Enrollment?language=en_US

I won't recommend ZTE to any customer with fully managed line of business device until that friction can be eliminated from the process by enabling the manufacturers to also co-manage ZTP. There is unnecessary overhead in managing the deregistration around the repair process and that effectively negates the "zero touch" concept. It may be zero touch of the device for an EMM admin but it is 15-20 taps for an end user enrolling a device through the SUW and then extra overhead of managing registrations and deregistrations in the portal. I honestly thing the value of ZTE is overstated and the name "Zero Touch" is a misnomer.

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