Forum Discussion
[Feedback] App installs: share your experiences & suggestions
Pretty sure it's not possible on the way the playstore is working and yes, i was thinking about that a long time ago but came to the decision that if you use play store functionalities (where the private one is part of), it must work like this because that's the identifier (like in a DB) the playstore looks out for the app information like version and so on.
So if you would allow it, they get mixed up or need to be 2 completely seperate systems etc. where both doesn't sound good.
So, finally you need to use a MDM which can provide apk's directly, so having version control there (like WS1 and Mobicontrol or others) or you need the app developers to create an apk with a bundleID unique for you like "their.bundleID.yourCompany" so you can make use of the private play store.
But again, would way more likely have a full version control inside of MGP or even the possibility to load apk's directly from playstore to provide them via the MDM (maybe isolate the download possibility to managed google playstore accounts and ofc only to free apps).
Completely agree on these points. I represent both a software company developing line-of-business apps as well as a device management and support business. Because we deal with mission critical mobile app deployments we can't rely on Public Play for app deployments because it doesn't offer proper version control for our end customers. That leads us to the path of test tracks in Private Play, but even that is unmanageable given certain limitations with the number of test Orgs you can associate with and the number of tracks certain MDMs like Intune can render and interact with. We are also completely unwilling to generate ~1500 unique compiles of our app for each individual customer and to generate those on the 2 week sprint cycles. That finally pushes us completely away from Managed Play (public or private) to the realm of direct app installs. This is in turn effectively eliminates all AMAPI aligned EMMS and narrows viable EMMS to just those that also offer direct APK installs like WS1, SOTI, and 42 Gears. This tends to ruffle feathers within IT organizations, especially those that don't grasp these nuances but do like the price tag of Intune. At the end of the day however the mission critical business apps are more important than the management tool used to manage the devices so we tend to win that argument. The MDM should work in support of the business functions that the device needs to perform, and not the other way around.
