Multi-user Environment

Multiple users functionality introduced on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) allows multiple user spaces on shareable devices such as tablets. The pre-installed user is called owner and is allowed to access all device functionalities. Later created users are called guest and can access a smaller set of features.

Each user on a device has his own set of accounts, applications, system settings, files, and any other user-associated data. Some functionalities are device wide and are not specific to a particular user, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. In addition, other functionalities are only available on owner's space, such as Telephony, Messaging, etc. In order to adapt existent MDM policies to this new scenario and help developers understand their scope, policies have been divided in the following categories:

User Scope: These policies are strictly applied in the user space the client administrator is installed.

Global Scope: These policies have device wide effects. If any client administrator installed in a guest user tries to set these types of policy, an exception will be thrown.

Note: All non protected multi-user Global Scope policies can be called from any user space.

User creation/removal can only be done from owner's space. Administrators installed on such space will be able to create/remove users, restrict user creation/removal, among other functionalities. For multiple user management policies, please refer to MultiUserManager class.