Forty floor tablets, one URL, no MDM

The inventory app is a desktop program the team wrote three years ago. The warehouse wants it on forty cheap tablets. Nobody wants to port it, and IT doesn't want to enrol forty devices in management software to sideload anything.

The app runs in a container. Each tablet's browser bookmarks the display URL with ?keyboard=true&decorations=false&toolbar=false&reconnect=true. Tap is click, pinch is zoom, the virtual keyboard appears for the SKU field. Proxy permissions limit the URL to the warehouse's IP range, so it works on the floor and nowhere else.

When a tablet's battery dies mid-count, the next one opens the same URL and the form is exactly where it was, because it was never on the tablet. A dropped tablet is replaced from the box. Nothing was on it.

Forty devices to provision became forty bookmarks, and the app didn't change.