Some system apps like phone dialer do not work properly in kiosk mode

Question

We are enrolling h-mdm on a Samsung Galaxy A22 5G (SM-A226B/DSN) and we need kiosk mode, but we want to preserve permissions to make calls to anyone.

After enrolling, we aren't able to use phone application if in kiosk mode (calls do work only when not in kiosk mode).

I made some debug to find the apps which are triggered when making phone calls:

com.samsung.android.dialer

com.samsung.android.incallui

com.samsung.android.app.telephonyui

I added those apps in the MDM Application menu with the "allow" option, associated with the smartphones profile, but calls still doesn't work (but sms does work), do I need to allow some other specific permissions/etc. ?

Answer 1

In kiosk mode, applications which are not explicitly allowed, are silently disabled (not being started) by Android OS.

To find which application is blocked and needs to be allowed, turn off kiosk mode and retry the action (phone call in your case). It is probable that you get a black screen "Application is not allowed".

An alternative would be to switch on logging and search for a log record like this:

Blocked package by usage stats: app.package.id / *************

Get the package ID and allow it in your configuration.

This should fix the issue.

Answer 2

If you do not see blocking attempts by Headwind MDM, note that Headwind MDM cannot block services. So there could be some service which needs to run but it can't because of the kiosk mode.

This could only be resolved by collecting logcat from the device. 

Search for message like this:

10-12 09:56:10.149  1408 12311 E ActivityTaskManager: Attempted Lock Task Mode violation mStartActivity=ActivityRecord{db0c8b6 u0 com.android.server.telecom/.PrivilegedCallActivity t160}

This message means that you need to allow com.android.server.telecom package.