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
Related
I have implemented Android license verification to protect users sharing APK files of my paid app. But what if they purchase the app from one Google account share the account details with each other? Is there a way to determine if such a thing is happening and limit the number of devices that can download that app with one account or outright ban that Google account if they share the details with, let's say 5 devices or something like that? Does Google Play Console let me see what Gmail accounts are used to install the app? How can I avoid users sharing the account/app without implementing a fully blown sign in system of my own? I am not dealing with the most advanced hackers or anything. Just avoiding an average Joe sharing account details in a group chat is my goal.
I am making an android app which I want to distribute to Play Store from my Developer Account and make it available for just 5-10 specific google accounts. I read Google Plays support page for releasing private apps (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6145139?hl=en). What I understand from reading this article, is that to release an app for Private distribution, the users must belong to an organization. I assume this means the users must belong to a Gsuite Subscription.
Instead of it, is there a way to distribute an app privately where I can make it available to just specific google accounts which I can modify anytime I want and the users don't need to pay for Gsuite Subscription. The users also need to be able to use the app for extended periods of time.
I know there's an easier way to distribute the app with APK file, but that creates the hassle of checking "Install from Unknown sources" from user's phone. Also for each subsequent update the APK file needs to be distributed repeatedly to each individual user.
I am setting up a Google Play Private Channel for a company I'm working for. The instructions say that you need a Google Apps for Business account to download the app from the private channel. We have many sales reps who need to continuously upgrade when there is a new release pushed to the private channel.
Can we share one Google Apps for Business account for many users?
I'd like to have one account, sales#company.com, that they all share. The reason for this being that I don't want to propose a solution that would cost the company $5/month/user, which is the cost of a Google Apps for Business account!
If you only need to restrict downloads to a particular set of users, you don't actually need a Google Play Private Channel: you can use the beta testing feature of Google Play to publish the app only to a 'beta' channel and only allow your sales reps access to the Google Group you set up with access to the beta channel.
As long as you never publishing a production version, the app remains visible only to those 'beta testers' i.e., your sales reps and not to the wider Google Play audience.
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 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.