Onboarding a Tablet

This is the end-to-end journey that takes a fresh tablet and turns it into one that is ready to write protocols on a real Dienst. It is written for the person setting the device up — an admin or technician.

The journey has four stages, in order:

  1. Provision the tablet as an Android Device Owner (kiosk).

  2. Confirm the kiosk end state — the tablet boots into the osd front door.

  3. Enrol the device to the server (one-time, GPG-verified).

  4. Connect to a Dienst and start documenting.

Work through them top to bottom. Each stage assumes the one before it succeeded.

This page is the map. Two stages have their own detailed procedures elsewhere — follow the xrefs when you reach them:

Stage 1 — Provision as Android Device Owner

osd runs as an Android Device Owner kiosk: the tablet is locked into osd, osd is the home launcher, and reboots return to osd. There is no "uninstall" — the only way back out is a factory reset.

Before you touch the provisioning flow:

  • Factory-reset the tablet.

  • Set the Android system locale to Deutsch (Deutschland) before provisioning — the setup-wizard text is German and a mismatched locale causes needless troubleshooting.

There are two provisioning paths. Read the caveat before choosing.

Use the adb path. On the primary device — the Redmi Pad 2 Pro (HyperOS) — the QR path is documented as "preferred" but is known to fail at the in-wizard ~143 MB APK download. The adb path is the actually-verified route, and it only works on a fresh, un-provisioned tablet. Lead with it.

Path A — adb (verified, fresh device only)

On a factory-reset tablet, skip all accounts in the wizard, enable Developer options → USB-Debugging, then:

adb install -r app-universal-release.apk
adb shell dpm set-device-owner de.eventsanitaeter.es_dashboard/.OsdDeviceAdminReceiver

Reboot. The tablet comes back up in the osd kiosk.

Path B — QR provisioning (preferred on paper; fails on HyperOS)

Factory-reset, tap the welcome screen 6x to open the QR flow, join Wi-Fi, and scan the release provision.png. On the primary device this stalls at the ~143 MB download — fall back to Path A. Full steps, expected wizard text, and troubleshooting live in the Kiosk runbook.

After provisioning, adb is gone. On a locked kiosk, USB adb stays unauthorized and Wireless debugging pairing fails. You cannot push a later build over a cable. From this point on, OTA self-update is the only way to land new builds — plan around it. See the Kiosk runbook for the OTA update procedure.

Stage 2 — Confirm the kiosk end state

A correctly provisioned tablet boots straight into the osd front door — not the Android home screen, not an app drawer.

You should see:

  • the osd logo,

  • the primary "Einsatzbereitschaft herstellen" button,

  • a "Neuen Dienst anlegen" affordance,

  • a Settings gear (top-left).

If you instead land on the Android home screen or an app launcher, Device Owner was not established — factory-reset and reprovision (Stage 1). Recovery symptoms and remedies are catalogued in the Kiosk runbook.

Stage 3 — Enrol the device to the server

Enrollment binds this tablet to your organisation’s server and installs the GPG trust anchor. It is a one-time, two-stage, human-in-the-loop step. There is no zero-touch or automatic registration — enrollment is deliberate and manual, by design.

3a — Generate an enrollment token (admin panel)

In the admin panel, open Geräte and generate an enrollment token.

The token is 16 characters, single-use, and expires in 10 minutes. Generate it right before you enrol the tablet — do not generate it in advance. Token generation lives in the Admin Panel.

3b — Enrol on the tablet

On the tablet’s front door:

  1. Tap the Settings gear. On first use you will be asked to set the Wartungs-PIN — this PIN gates Settings from now on (see PINs).

  2. Open "Geräte-Einschreibung".

  3. Enter the server URL, the token, and a device name (e.g. Tablet 1).

The app calls the server, receives the device identity plus the organisation’s GPG public key, and displays a GPG fingerprint (a 16-character key ID, shown as four groups: 1234 5678 9ABC DEF0).

3c — Verify the fingerprint by hand, then confirm

The operator MUST compare the displayed fingerprint, by hand, against the organisation’s offline GPG key holder, and confirm only on an exact match. This is the trust anchor for all encrypted writes — confirming a wrong fingerprint binds the device to the wrong key.

Aborting or restarting the app before you confirm discards the enrollment. The secrets are only written to disk on confirmation.

On a successful confirm, the device appears in the admin panel Geräte list immediately.

Stage 4 — Connect to a Dienst

The tablet is now enrolled but not yet on a shift. To start documenting:

  1. At the front door, tap "Einsatzbereitschaft herstellen" and enter the Shift-PIN (set by the admin per Dienst — see PINs).

  2. Work through the readiness checklist: confirm the roster that is present, add any external people, then complete "Einsatzbereitschaft herstellen".

  3. The tablet is now ready to document.

The readiness checklist items shown today are a placeholder set — the final list is still owner-supplied. Rely on the flow (confirm roster → add externals → establish readiness), not on the specific line items.

For the full shift model — creating, joining, and closing a Dienst — see the Dienst lifecycle. Once ready, see Writing a protocol.

Failure mode — "bricked-but-locked"

If enrollment (Stage 3) fails after the tablet is already locked into the kiosk — the server is unreachable, the token expired, or the fingerprint dialog was dismissed — the tablet is now locked into osd without a valid enrollment. It cannot sync or document for a real Dienst.

There is no in-app escape from this state. Because adb is unavailable on a locked kiosk (Stage 1), the only recovery is a factory reset + reprovision (Stage 1). Fix the root cause first — server reachable? fresh token generated? correct fingerprint? — before you reprovision, or you will land right back here. Recovery detail: Kiosk Operations Runbook.

See also