Sophos Secure email - notifications problem?

Question

Hi guys, 
 
 we are testing SSE version 7.19.12 on IOS (SMC v. 6.1.12..) but it seems that notification doesn't work (also if the app is in background))... the problem seems the same of the versione 6.11.x... We have the SSE app locked by password, could be the problem in any way linked to the authentication set on SSE or it's really a bugged app... Please let me know if there is any change to have it working because we really enjoy the EMM solution (we started using this solution 3 years ago..) but it's better to not have this app if it works in this horrible way. 
 
 By the way also the export of contacts, on our Ipads, seems not working.. 
 
 Regards

SDU · Accepted Answer

Hi Riccardo, 
 this is currently a known issue within Sophos Secure Email. 
 First, let me give you a bit of technical background about how iOS treats individual apps and their behavior. In order to increase battery life and limit data consumption, Apple iOS only allows the app in foreground to get permanent access to internet data and/or CPU cycles. All apps in the background are put into sleep mode and in the case of certain conditions, like low memory, these apps may even be pushed further into the background to device storage. This app management functionality is handled transparently by iOS in the background, with little to no way for an app developer to influence its behavior. Only a very select number of apps and features on the device get preferential treatment and are always allowed to execute instructions in the background, for example: telephony, SMS text messaging, navigation, and the built-in iOS email client. Other apps can request permission to run in the background, but as I mention above, the operating system will grant this access based on internal rules and heuristics and may even suspend the app altogether. 
 The Sophos Secure Email app always requests background processing privileges to enable it to check for new emails. If the device is running in a state where the Sophos Secure Email app has been sent to the background, iOS will periodically grant CPU cycles to the app. The bad news is that this can take a bit of time, sometimes up to 50 minutes. iOS continuously optimizes its behavior based on user patterns, which means that as an app is used more frequently, its priority increases and the app will not so easily be pushed to the background or suspended to device storage. We continuously improve how the Sophos Secure Email app interacts with this operating system optimization, so please make sure you always have the latest version of Sophos Secure Email installed on all your devices. The last couple of updates have greatly improved the response times of notifications. 
 This issue will be addressed soon but requires a Sophos Mobile Control 7.0 server and a patch which will be released soon. 
 Once the patch is available, you can enable a special setting which enables the app to display the usual red icon next to the app displaying that a new email arrived. 
 Regarding the export of the contact, please re-test it with Sophos Secure Email 7.23.4 released last week. 
 Best regards Stefan