I want to publish my app to a limited set of users (Not country and carrier specific). I searched on the internet and found this. However this has lead to confusion, at the start the document says that we can create a private channel to distribute apps throughout an organization.
A Google Apps for Business, Education, or Government domain can have a Private Channel on the Google Play Store. The Google Apps domain administrators can allow domain users to register with the Android Developer Console to publish Android applications to the Private Channel. The publisher account owner who registered with the Android Developer Console must be a Google Apps user in the same domain, such as internal IT staff, and not external developers.
But at the end the document says:
Can I publish an app to a specific group of users?
No. But you can publish an app targeting a specific country or specific device models.
If anyone has a better insight on this, please enlighten me. I want to publish an app internal to my organization what are the possible ways?
I think its better to do like following:-
Alpha- and beta-testing
If you are planning to go alpha- and beta-testing route, it’s best to start with a small group of alpha testers (perhaps employees of your company, or a few fellow developers) and then move on to a larger group of beta testers.
Follow this link:-
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/3131213?hl=en
Its just simple you have to create an community of the employees with their google account.and simple add this community as a beta tester.so everyone get the mail regarding the link to download an app and acceptance of permissionbecome an tester.
My understanding of the document you quote is that the app developer must be inside the domain serviced by the Private Channel. An external developer (one who is outside the domain) cannot publish to that specific domain.
Thinking it through, we have to ask "how could Google control publishing to a specific domain?" As soon as we ask that we can see all sorts of security and control issues. We could imagine a malicious developer publishing a trojan app that is targeted at a particular business they wanted to damage.
So there are the two paths: a private Channel publishing to a given domain, and the Alpha / Beta path recommended by Born To Win.
I've got my personal Google Play Developer account, but within the company I work for, I'd like to start distributing an app. We have a Google Apps account with a very limited number of users - (we only have 5 people on the account), while the company itself has a few thousand employees.
Ultimately, we'd want to distribute to a wider array of people (people who are not on the Google Apps account) and potentially even include users who are not employees.
I imagine setting up a "white-list" of external users who can see the app, download it, get updates - but I can't find out whether this exists or not for private channels. Before I request the company pay the $25 for a developer account so that I can see whether or not this is possible, I was wondering if anyone knows the answer?
"Can I publish an app to a specific group of users?
No. But you can publish an app targeting a specific country or specific device models."
"Can I publish an app to both the public Google Play store and a Private Channel?
This functionality is not supported in the initial release. An app can either be published publicly or to a Private Channel, and not both."
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2494992?hl=en
I have looked around on the internet and cannot find anything on this topic. If my app is a game and I want users to buy tokens from me for a price and they pay one dollar for 100 tokens, how can I make my app communicate with google and bring up a menu so they can purchase through google? Is there any tutorials on this subject?
To make sure people understand it, If my app has an Activity which has a button that reads "100 tokens for 1$" Then another button that reads "500 tokens for 2$" and they click either button, it will bring up a google popup that says purchase. Then it uses their google account information through the app market to purchase the tokens. Many apps have this feature so I hope you know what I am talking about.
Please help me out, and thanks.
Also, I have looked at In-App Billing and they say you must post your app on the Google Play market complete the In-App Billing process. How can I add my app to Google Play without users being able to download or even see it. I want to upload for only developing reasons
In-App Billing is indeed the correct approach for having user purchases within your application. As you mentioned, this is only available via Google Play published apps. However, if you do not want to publish your app publically, you can use Google Play's Beta-testing program to upload an app to Google Play but only make it available to a specific group of people (those who you allow to join a Google Group or Google+ Community).
As long as you never publish a production version and only publish to the alpha/beta channel in the Google Play Developer Console, then you can create an app that utilizes In-App Billing without being public.
I have an app that I have published in alpha mode through Google Play. The app is in stealth mode and so I want the name/id of the app to remain private. But the url from google is https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mycompany.myapp. So I am wondering if some unsanctioned person may discover my app id/name.
From Google Play Support:
Alpha- or beta-test apps will only appear in Google Play for testers that opt-in and not to any other users.
If you've done testing yourself and just want some documentation backing it up, you can't get much better than that.
I have developed my app and have published it through Google Play for alpha testing. As one of the testers I get an opt-in link, where I signed in as a tester. After that I was hoping to download the app directly with my phone by going to the Play Store on my phone. But as it seems to turn out, I have to got to the app's web profile and then from there click download; only then does the Play Store download the app to my phone.
I want to get other alpha testers involved and I was hoping to make the process easier for them. Is there an easier way? As in, once they opt-in, I would like them to just use their Android phone to download the app the way they would any other app. Is there a way?
Clarifications:
I am not looking for an alternative to Google Play
I have already gone through the Google Group creation process. My question is concerning what happens after a group member opts-in. Can they use their phone directly (play-app on phone) or must they download from the website? So far I have not been successful using the play-app.
You need to publish the app before it becomes available for testing.
if you publish the app and the apk is only in "alpha testing" section
then it is NOT available to general public, only for activated testers in the alpha section.
EDIT:
One additional note: "normal" users will not find your app on Google Play, but also the activated tester can not find the application by using the search box.
Only the direct link to the application package will work. (only for the activated testers).
Here is a check list for you:
1) Is your app published? (Production APK is not required for publishing)
2) Did your alpha/beta testers "Accept invitation" to Google+ community or Google group?
3) Are your alpha/beta testers logged in their Google+ account?
4) Are your alpha/beta testers using your link from Google Play developer console? It has format like this: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.yourdomain.package
Publish your alpha apk by pressing the submit button.
Wait until it's published.
(e.g.: CURRENT APK published on Apr 28, 2015, 2:20:13AM)
Select Alpha testers - click Manage list of testers.
Share the link with your testers (by email).
(e.g.: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/uk.co.xxxxx.xxxxx)
It should be noted that releasing an alpha app for the first time may take up to a few hours before an opt-in link is available and invitations are sent out to the email addresses in your testers list.
From Google support:
After publishing an alpha/beta app for the first time, it may take a
few hours for your test link to be available to testers. If you
publish additional changes, they may take several hours to be
available for testers. [source]
You may want to wait until you have an initial opt-in link before publishing more changes to the app because doing so is likely to increase your wait time for receiving your tester link; or, may lead to your testers testing with the incorrect version.
Hope that clears things up for anyone confused about why they don't have an opt-in link as depicted in screenshots in this SO thread!
Under APK/ALPHA TESTING/MANAGE TESTERS you find:
Choose the method you want.
Then you need to first upload your Apk. Before it can be published you need to go to the usual steps in publishing which means: you need icons, the FSK ratings, screenshots etc.
After you added it you click on publish.
You find the link for your testers at:
Google play store provides closed testing track to test your application with a limited set of testers pre-defined in the tester's list known as Alpha Testing. Here are some important things to be considered to use alpha testing.
Important
After publishing an alpha/beta app for the first time, it may take a few hours for your test link to be available to testers. If you publish additional changes, they may take several hours to be available for testers
Managing Testers for Alpha Testing
The Screenshot is most recent as of answering this question. You can see the manage testers for closed alpha testing, You can add and remove tester one by one or you can use CSV file to bulk add and remove. The list of defined email addresses will be eligible for testing the app, here you can a control whom to provide the app for testing. Hence, this is known as Closed Testing.
You can see the link(washed out by red line), once your app available to test, your testers can download and test the app by going to the below-given link. For that Google will ask once to the tester for joining the testing program. Once they have joined the program, they will receive an app update. As stated by store, it may take 24 hours to make an app available for testing.
Once your app available, Your invited testers can join the test by going the link https://play.google.com/apps/testing/YOUR PACKAGE NAME
Managing App Releases
After the Manage testers card, there is a card for manage release, from here you can manage your alpha releases and roll-out them to production by clicking the button at the top of the card once they well tested. This process of rolling out from testing to production/public is known as stagged roll-out. In stagged roll-out, the publisher publishes by the percentage of users, to better analyze the user response.
You can also manage multiple alpha release app versions from here, at the bottom of the screenshot you can see that I have once more apk build version being served as alpha test app.
Managing Closed Track Testing Availability
Apart from the user based control, you have one more control over the availability of the app for a test in the country. You can add limited countries tester to the app. suppose your list of the testers are from multiple countries and you want the application to be tested in your country only, rather removing testers from the testing list, you can go through Alpha Country Availability. It gives more precise control over testers.
Here, In Screenshot, my app is available worldwide states that my testers (from testers list) can test the app in all countries.
In my experience the flow is:
you publish the app as beta in Google Play and create the Google+ community
invite the tester to the community
once he has joined, send him the link of the test app in Google Play
the tester opens the link in the browser (not google play app)
registers as tester
in the browser, install the apps to the device (the app will be magically pushed to the device)
Another issue of that page if you use multiple playstore accounts:
In some cases you still get a 404, even if you are currently logged in with the right account, the one you joined the beta community with.
As a workaround, you can clear the browser cache, use another browser for the beta signup, or just use the incognito mode of your browser.
You can use a Google Group and have your alpha testers just join the group. Everything else should just be handled through the Google Play Store App.