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Configure Your iPhone or iPad

Overview

There are two options for configuring iOS devices to sync mail, calendar, and contacts with your Google Apps account:

  • Option 1: Use Stanford's Mobile Device Management (MDM) service to automatically configure your iOS device.
  • Option 2: Manually configure your iOS device to use Google Sync.

Option 1: Mobile Device Management (MDM)

When you enroll your iOS device in the MDM service you can request that it automatically be configured to access your Google Apps account.  No manual configuration steps are necessary.

The MDM service offers a number of additional benefits, including the ability to use a management interface to take various actions on your device should you lose it. For instance, you could lock the screen or wipe the data from your phone (either all of the data on the phone, or just your Stanford email).  You'll also have some other "best practices" related to security set for you, and you'll be in a position to receive updated settings in the future as those best practices evolve over time. See the MDM Service page for more information about this service.

To enroll your device using the MDM service go to the following URL from your device: mdm.stanford.edu/register

Option 2: Manual configuration

Requirements for backing up your data

  1. Google Sync is only supported on Apple iOS versions 3.0 and above. You can check your current version by going to Settings > General > About > Version. If you're running an iOS before 3.0, upgrade to the latest iOS on Apple's site: www.apple.com/ios/ before setting up Google Sync.
  2. Perform a sync with iTunes to ensure that Contacts and Calendars from your iOS device are backed up to your computer. Learn more about backing up your Contacts and Calendars.

Getting started

  1. Open the Settings application on your device's home screen.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap Add Account.
  4. Select Microsoft Exchange. iOS 4.0+ allows multiple Exchange accounts. However, if you are on a device that doesn't let you add a second account, you can also use CalDAV to sync Google Calendar and IMAP  to sync Google Mail.

    Add an account

Entering account info

  1. In the Email field, enter your sunet_id@stanford.edu address.
  2. In the Domain field, enter stanford.edu.
  3. In the Username field, enter your SUNet ID.
  4. In the Password field, enter your Google Account password.
  5. Enter a Description of the account for yourself, such as Google Apps.
  6. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
    Note: Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog box appears.
  7. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
  8. Tap Next at the top of your screen again.

    Account information

Enabling Mail and Calendar

  1. Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync. To receive and respond to meeting requests on your device, both Mail and Calendar need to be turned on, and New Invitations needs to be enabled in your Google Calendar settings.

    To enable New Invitations, sign in to your Google Calendar using the web browser on your phone or computer. Go to Calendar Settings > Calendars and tap the Notifications for the calendar you want to sync. Under Email, check New Invitations (and any of the other Invitation settings you want enabled), and click Save.
  2. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

    If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the All Contacts group instead. If there are no contacts on your phone, the latter will happen — the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.

    select Google services you want to sync

    Now that you've set up Google Sync, synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your device. You can also open the Mail, Calendar, or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync.

More information

Last modified December 9, 2015