Modern Client Management and BigFix Mobile

This section guides you through BigFix Modern Client Management (MCM) and BigFix Mobile to understand the MCM concepts, terminologies, features, and functionality. You can find detailed instructions for managing the complete lifecycle of your MDM managed endpoints here.

Overview

  • BigFix delivers an agent capability to endpoint management that dynamically provides visibility to every endpoint. BigFix WebUI facilitates to manage modern devices that do not have a BigFix agent installed as well as to manage traditional devices that have BigFix agent installed. BigFix agent initiates downloads, patches, configurations, and other content to the endpoint in real-time; initiates actions and performs continuous self-assessment and policy enforcement. BigFix also provides agentless management for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android endpoints.
  • For architecture overview and other detailed information on MDM on-premises , see On premises deployments.
  • BigFix extends management to corporate-owned and BYOD devices running Windows, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android by delivering important actions and out-of-the-box policies to effectively manage the endpoints.

BigFix MCM

With BigFix MCM you can extend the management capabilities to modern laptops with Windows and macOS operating systems by leveraging MDM technology.

BigFix Mobile

BigFix Mobile extends endpoint management to iOS, iPadOS, and Android devices.

Prerequisites

For complete details, see Prerequisites and requirements.

Feature overview

Modern Client Management and BigFix Mobile facilitates the management of modern clients in your environment in the following ways:

Device enrollment
BigFix MCM supports various enrollment methods for devices with different operating systems based on the organization’s need. For more details, see Device Enrollment.
MCM Dashboard

BigFix Modern Client Management dashboard provides:

  • Insights about the MCM managed devices in your environment and the health of the overall MCM deployment.
  • Quick glance of statistics on every aspect of device management, device security, and device encryption.
  • Notifications on important statistics such as number of reporting and non-reporting devices, number of succeeded and failed actions.
  • An overview on the total number of devices enrolled, number of devices with each operating system, and type of device such as mobile or desktop.
  • A quick access to your daily tasks, help information, and the link to create support ticket.
Deploy BigFix agent (MCM only)
With MCM, you can deploy the BigFix agent on enrolled macOS or Windows devices through WebUI. Enrolled MCM devices that also have the BigFix agent installed benefit from the capabilities of both management capabilities, and users see one consolidated representation of the device. Actions from both the BigFix agent and MDM APIs are available to these correlated devices.
Device inventory (MCM and BigFix Mobile)
With MCM and BigFix Mobile, you can view critical device information in the device list, regardless of whether the information is pulled from the native BigFix agent, MDM, or cloud instances.
Note: Non-Master Operators must have the access permission to the mobile site (BESUEM Mobile) to access the mobile related content in WebUI.
Simplified Device Representations (MCM and BigFix Mobile)
On the WebUI, an icon indicates the type of each device on your network (native , cloud , or MDM ). When an endpoint has more than one representation, it shows multiple icons. A device that has multiple representations is called a correlated device.
Device Management (MCM and BigFix Mobile)
MCM and BigFix Mobile provides additional capabilities and policies to help manage modern desktops such as macOS and Windows and mobile devices such as Android, iOS, and iPadOS. It supports actions such as lock, wipe, restart, shutdown, You can apply capabilities that are captured in BigFix artifacts called Policies.
Device Security

MCM and BigFix Mobile facilitates enforcement of security policies on managed devices. With this, IT admins can ensure that all managed devices have the right settings set for passwords, restrictions, and more.

Application Management (MCM and BigFix Mobile)

MCM enables you to pre-stage applications on the MDM server to distribute them to macOS and Windows endpoints through policy groups. BigFix Mobile enables you distribute basic store applications from Play store and App store.

Policy Management (MCM and BigFix Mobile)
BigFix MCM and BigFix Mobile enables you to set common passcode policies and restriction policies across your Apple (macOS, iOS, and iPadOS), Windows, and Android devices. You can also upload custom policies suitable for your organization and the device’s operating system. For a list of policies available for different operating systems, see Manage policies.

License requisite

  • You can manage Laptops via MDM API’s and the WebUI with BigFix MCM, BigFix Lifecycle, and BigFix Compliance licenses.
  • Managing Mobile devices in BigFix requires a BigFix Mobile license.