So, is there a realiable way to update enterprise/intern apps remotelly?
I work in a company that spreads across my state, including some areas that the access is dificult, so I can't send someone to locally update the app everytime there's a new release.
I'm working with Android/Java at the moment, and we also use Azure DevOps to store the repositories.
I tryied App Center from Microsoft but didn't understood if that could help me update my app or not.
Also, we don't want to publish the application to the PlayStore and make it public. Unless, of course, if that's the only way.
Thank you for your time reading this, I will keep searching something related to this and also share here any solution that I can find.
There's different ways to do so I'll say some but there's definitely more.
You can use Push-link, read about it it does more or less what you are looking for.
Perhaps could work uploading the .apk to Google Play and just publish it for beta testers, here's an old Google Play Private App Guide pdf and perhaps it doesn't work anymore but give it a try.
Also what you tried with App Center perhaps what you are looking for is Distribution In-App Updates
Note: This is not recommended to avoid by passing Google Play to distribute an app
Related
I published many versions so far. And, the users should use the most recent app. However, apkpure shows all the app list that I released.
How come this website take all the apk or abb? I don't want the website takes my applications and block the users in the app. Is there any way to do that?
Actually it's possible to do, using one of the Android features like app bundles. This could help you to verify non Google Play installation. Or even create behavior to crash/exit in such cases.
The whole idea of the approach, it's separation application features to different bundles which could installed be installed within Google play package manager. So you can check it's documentation.
Lots of android users can not access play store when removing the google restrictions, because they want apk file for install. Third party websites publish for that kind users, As well as some desktop users want APk file specially GAME APPs. I think they not Change original APK file.
I have an app I wrote for a small business that is being used by <10 people. Ideally i'd like to use Google Play to distibute updates, collect crash logs, and review device configurations.
Is it possible to prevent the app from showing up when people search for it, so I could just distribute the link that the owner can share with his employees?
I am trying to avoid setting up EMM and paying for enterprise level distribution.
And I am aware of the security concerns of people accidently stumbling on the app in the play store when it's listed under new. Preventing people from accessing it via search is all I'm concerned about at this point.
You could use the Alpha or Beta channel to do this. If the app is published Alpha or Beta only it is not visible in the general Play store to anyone outside the Alpha.
However, this is not a long term or multi-customer solution. Setting up an EMM based solution is much better, and need not be that expensive.
I have a app created in xamarin forms, I already know how to create the APK, the app is to be used internally, i dont want to publish to the appstore, how can the app be update when is available a new version ?
Depending on your resources at hand and requirements, you have a couple of options. These options include, but are certainly not limited to:
Visual Studio Mobile Center (link): probably the most obvious choice. Out of the box support for Xamarin, and 'just works'. You can set up different groups of users, add analytics and crash reporting, etc. In the future you might be able to take your configuration to its big brother: VSTS. But beware! The product is in preview right now. Preview in Microsoft-land means free for now, but doesn't have to be in the future. While I expect it not to cost much/anything for basic functionality, it is something to be aware of. Not sure on this, but I think you need to invite your users by hand, so you have to know who you want to invite.
Google Play Store (link): It's kind of a mis-use, but you could of course leverage the Google Play Stores capabilites for Alpha/Beta testing. Also here you have the ability to create groups and have some basic reporting options. In terms of delivering your app you have some nice options here like A/B testing and unlike Mobile Center (again, I didn't verify this) you can setup a link with which people can enroll themselves. Depending on your needs, this might be nice. In terms of costs, this will set you back 25 dollars once. And you could develop and distribute other apps if you'd like.
Manual: send the APK file manually or hosting it on a shared location. I would prefer this least of all. People are not notified of any updates and you don't have any insights apart from something you might have incorporated in your app. Also you don't have any control over who installs or sees the app, etc.
But of course the prefered way would be to do it through the Google Play enterprise program. See this website. This provides you and your end-users with a private app store basically. Or as they say:
A managed version of Google Play is used by enterprises and their employees to access a rich ecosystem of work and productivity apps.
You can have private apps, only available for your targeted audience and still leverage the power of the Google Play store. The experience for your end-users will be unified with the regular app store.
I couldn't find a straight answer, but it seems the private apps will also cost just 25 dollars once and is included in the regular Play Store developer license.
You have a good way to do that : Use Beta this a service provided by Fabric, you can upload your app with different versions and get access to different teams in your company. It's easy to use and quick to manage.
Hope it helps.
You have multiple options at your hand:
use Bitrise or Visual Studio Mobile Center (aka HockeyApp) to build and provide a downloadable version of you app
in addiont to Bitrise or VS Mobile Center you can set up your own store. Take a look at Relution for example
build locally on your machine and push it to:
a fileshare
an FTP-site
the user by mail.
The company I work for wants me to publish their app as hidden in the Google play store and from what I have found that is not really the case unless a) you create a Google apps work account and invite all clients/staff to join and b) keep it as a beta and use clients/staff as testers. Is it really any other way of publishing an application as hidden (not searchable) and accessible only by link lets say?
You can use private channel for distribution or check alternative solutions like crashlytics
Only people who joined the beta test program can download your app. I don't know if you can really hide it from other people because in that case it would be still accessible in other ways such as the package name.
If there is no option for that, then probably that is not possible
But you might be searching for this: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/2623322?hl=en
Edit:
If it is not a requirement to publish the app explicitly on Google Play, then you could upload it to your own web server and only let staff/clients have access to it.
You could then also implement a little updater in the app itself so it is kept updated.
Think about it. I have already made such an updater and it is not difficult to implement it.
Btw, if you don't mind, you may take a look at aptoide.com where you can publish apps but without being visible to other people.
I am going to have a alpha release of my app, which is not yet on the market. I want to have the app APK link sent out to friends via email so they can download it from my site CDN.
One question here: if I want to give them updates, what will be a good way? Can I download the new APK within the app, and somehow install the APK to replace the old one without anything to do with the market? So my friends can have the app upgraded while it is still in alpha release?
When I did it, I used Zubhium -- they were a web service with a small API that you could install into your app, giving you a mini "app store"-style backend and handling distribution for you. It would host and distribute your APK, connect up to their server when the app launched, check for updates, invalidate old versions, gather crash logs for you, etc. It was very good.
Zubhium are now https://www.vessel.io -- I presume they still have the above features as part of their now-much-bigger service, but when I checked you had to give them a credit card number even to sign up for the free plan, so I've not played with it.
A friend of mine uses http://testflightapp.com for iOS, and it looks like they have an Android version now, so that's certainly worth checking out. A quick search also shows up http://applover.me. #Janusz recommends http://hockeyapp.net/features in his comment.
As #Nanne points out in his answer, the Play Store itself now lets you distribute to limited alpha- and beta-test groups. That looks like it has fairly minimal features compared to the third-party services (no A/B testing, etc.), but will be familiar and free. And it doesn't need an extra SDK rolled into your app.
So, my general answer is that there's more than one professional beta-testing API/service that you could use, that they're generally very useful, quite easy to roll into your app, solve all the problems you're anticipating and more, and often have a free plan to get started. I'd recommend picking one of them rather than trying to roll your own solution.
If you want this only to be able to release your app in Alpha, and maybe later in beta, take a look at the android market again.
Check out this link: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213?hl=en
It boils down to the fact that you can have an Alpha-test, and a beta test, each with selected users. You can upload your app as normal, so you'll have updates via the market, but not everyone can download your app.
For the beta at least, you can select a community that is the source of your users, so all that are in that community could be testers.
This is the best method for testing I believe.