How to deploy your custom .apk files to android fully managed devices from Intune

[Shabbir]

i got stuck with one situation and need your guidance in solving it. We have our own .apk file for android devices, these are custom in-house developed applications, i want to deploy the application to Android Fully Managed devices (Since the device belongs to company). I did it before with publishing them to google play store as a private app but now the size is the problem as it exceed 200MB, so i cannot use this option. I tried with deploying them as Line of Business application but its been 2 days nothing shows on device and even in intune portal it neither failed or success.

Question: How to deploy your custom .apk files to android fully managed devices if the file size se more than 200MB?

[Michel]

Hi @Shabbir !

If the private play store is no longer an option, the line-of-business function should be the way to go. 

Just to be sure, have checked the it has been assigned to the correct group(s)? 

Could it be that you have restrictions set on installing applications from untrusted sources or installation from outside the play store? I'm not sure but that might be conflicting with this install method. 

Edit: I've checked it myself since its been a while that i've used this but the line of bussiness function only works when a device is enrolled as Device Administrator and not as Android enterprise. Since DA is no longer support, you might have no other option than installing it by hand on each device. 

[Moombas]

Interesting. Then Intune seem to have some limitation which (some) other MDM dont have as they provide other functionalities to deploy apk files.

Will keep this in mind if someone asks me again if we want to switch to intune again.

[Michel]

to make it even more interesting, there is no official documentation from MS that confirms this "issue". Strange move from Microsoft if you ask me. 

I found it in the configuration if a line-of-business app (the dropdown menu belongs to "Targeted platform" option):

[Shabbir]

Hi Michel, thanks for the info but manual installation on each device will be almost impossible for us, as we have 1000+ devices on which we want to push this custom application.

[mattdermody]

Hi Shabbir, this limitation of Intune is a big reason why I would never recommend it for the Fully Managed device use case. Intune only supports distribution of applications through Managed Play on Fully Managed Android Enterprise devices. I personally believe that Managed Play does not offer comprehensive version control or installation management that is suitable for managing a line-of-business or mission critical device estate.  Therefore any MDM that only supports Managed Play for app installation is in my book, not suitable for line-of-business device management. My strong recommendation would be to evaluate an alternative EMM with a custom DPC that supports both Managed Play AND direct APK installation on Fully Managed Android devices.  

[chickens]

Having the exact same scenario. The externallyHosted json file looks to be the official way forward.
Has anyone been able to get the externallyhosted.py to work.

There's a few steps to get it to work and getting stuck at:
__main__.MissingPrerequisiteError: Couldn't find the aapt binary on system's PATH. This binary is part of the Android developer's SDK. Please ensure it is available on the PATH.

aapt2-8.6.0-11315950-windows.jar downloaded, cant import as a custom plugin. 
Error: aapt2 failed to load plugin descriptor from file
Tried adding a system path to a folder which contains aapt2.exe still get the same error.