As COVID-19 or coronavirus spreads worldwide, companies are encouraging their employees to work from home. As a result, many employees may install apps, such as, Outlook for Android or iPhone, on their personal devices to check company emails. This may put company communication at risk, specially if the device is lost. This is where Intune Company Portal becomes a useful tool. Many companies are using the Intune Company Portal to secure personal devices which are used to access corporate information. This article discusses what the portal is all about and how to check your email without installing the portal.
Your Privacy and Intune Company Portal
The app makes it clear on what your company sees when you install the Intune Company Portal. The company can see the following: Phone model, serial number, operating system, work apps, owner, device name, manufacturer, and phone number. The app cannot see the following: Call and web history, location, email and text messages, contacts, passwords, calendar, camera roll, and personal apps.
Depending on your IT department, additional features such as taking screenshots of your phone may be enabled for remote assistance. Moreover, if the phone is lost, the IT department can wipe out or lock down the phone remotely.
Personally, I wouldn’t install Intune Company Portal to my personal device just because the it is being somewhat monitored. So, how can you check your email using the phone if the Outlook app is restricted? Let’s read along.
How to Check Email Without Intune Company Portal Installed
Fortunately, Microsoft allows checking of emails through the web browser even if you don’t have the Intune portal installed. Here are the steps for checking email without going through the Intune portal:
- Visit office.com using your favourite browsing app
- Tap or click on Sign In
- In the Email address field, enter your email address. Example, yourname@company.com. Tap next.
- Enter your password to sign in
Yes, accessing email through the web browser is not as feature rich when compared to the app. However, that’s the best option you have if your company restricts email access through Outlook app without installing Intune Company Portal. If you really want to use the Outlook app, perhaps install the portal on a spare device.
Our company has this blocked as well. Any other ways?
If you have a android device you can try to use you builtin email app. Like for samsung has their own email application if you configure your mail then you wont get the blockage.