A number of people wrote in response to yesterday’s post about changing my iPhone alphanumeric passcode to say that they never had the option to use anything but a numeric passcode. I did a little more digging and discovered that the use of an alphanumeric passcode was dictated by an Enterprise iPhone Configuration that was pushed down when I connected to my company Exchange server.
Initially, the system administrator had required a complex passcode. After some reconsideration, he dialed it back to allow less secure passcodes. That is when I changed my own passcode from a complex alphanumeric string to a simpler alphanumeric string, but because my passcode contained letters, I was still greeted with the tiny keyboard.
- (Complex passcode, tiny keyboard)
As I mentioned yesterday, after changing to a numeric passcode, I am now greeted with the much friendlier numeric keypad.
The Enterprise iPhone Configuration Utility is downloadable from Apple and contains many useful tools. From the Mac website:
(The) iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and push configuration profiles, track and install provisioning profiles and authorized applications, and capture device information including console logs…Configuration profiles are XML files that contain device security policies, VPN configuration information, Wi-Fi settings, APN settings, Exchange account settings, mail settings, and certificates that permit iPhone and iPod touch to work with your enterprise systems.
What I would like to find next is a utility that will allow me to examine the configuration file that was pushed down to my iPhone by my company Exchange server so I can create my own without overriding the one already there.