Forum Discussion
How to manage app using Intune
1 or a million customers, developers and customers will have to adapt to this alternative method of app management if relying on a platform that cannot distribute APKs.
It's an outdated and higher-risk method of app distribution in any case, so once transitioned you'll benefit from lower network usage, faster installs, and other benefits of Play.
Your struggles with version update issues can also be quelled with more intentional testing periods and app update management policies that'll allow you to install on test devices and validate before going live to your estate. This same approach can delay updates to periods when your developer is available too for more convenient version iterations.
But ultimately if it's a critical business application they need to work with you to support a custom package name and allow you to manage this end-to-end yourself. It's not difficult, nor high-effort since a bit of scripting can automate as many packages and names as they could want.
Discuss it with them.
Is it possible to share private Google Play apps between different organizations?
Process could be something like this:
- From MDM #1 Play iframe (for instance Intune) upload a private app
- Goto Advanced Editing / Google Play Console
- Under advanced settings add another organization id
- On MDM #2 it should show up as a "public" app in Play.
This is similar to what I would do with a public app that is only shared with a select organizations.
The advantage over public Play would be the less strict rules of private Play that allow older target SDKs etc.
Will this even work and if so is there something to be aware off?
Bo
Yes it is, and the process follows essentially what you just described. Though if you're in a situation needing to support multiple enterprise IDs, going through the Google Play console from the start and marking the app as private will give you all the benefits of private apps, without the burden of it being locked to one particular enterprise ID.
Marking private is under advanced settings > managed Google Play in the store listing area
Thanks for the input, James!
I followed the official instructions here:
High-level summary of steps:
- Created a test dummy app with a new (unused) package name using targetSdkVersion = 29 (intentionally too old for public Play app)
- Created a new private app in Play Console using a dev account and shared it with 2 test organizations enterprise id's (one from Intune and one from SOTI MobiControl)
- Published a production release, which went super-fast.
Now I would like to see the app in the Play iframe (opened from Intune or SOTI) but I could not find it with the search (even if I searched for the exact package name, I get all kind of odd games etc.). Is there a better way to search in the iframe?
Anyway, then I went old school logged into play.google.com/work where I could put the package id in the url query, this worked, and I could approve the app and now is showed up in the play.google.com/work/licenses/apps list with status approved.
Also, now it shows up in the iframe app collection, but it does not get synced to Intune / SOTI.
I have seen something similar with private apps uploaded through the iframe namely I uploaded it and wait for it to be ready, then I need to “choose” it in the iframe before it gets synced to the MDM.
So getting close but still no cigar 🙂
Hi jasonbayton ,
It works now when searching in "app name", I tried that also the other day but maybe it takes a bit of time to become available in search. Anyway now I can select - thanks for the help Jason.
Hi King the reason I wrote in this thread is that maybe a private app could be helpfull your software vendor? Fast releases and less restrictions can be useful for enterprise apps.
It can be combined with Play release tracks for explicit version control and managed config for "customization".
One old trick for rollback via Play is to re-release the previous app version with a higher versionCode. Again this could be combined with release tracks.
Anyway I agree with Jason that it should be manageable with proper release management and testing to run the "latest" versions of an enterprise app.
However there are options for running it with a more classically / controlled approach for enterprise apps on Play.
Bo Snitkjaer.
