How to Publish Private Apps (without needing access to the Google Play Console)
NOTE: This is not for private Apps hosted by your organization. Its for private Apps hosted by Google
Why use this feature?
Usually the IT administrators have permissions to access the Google Play Console as its a tool for developers. If you want you FocusMDM admin users (who are not technical) to be able to publish and distribute a new App or a new version of an App to your devices, then this is an essential feature for your organization.
FocusMDM uses the Google Play Custom App Publishing API so programmatically assists you to publish private apps to the managed Google Play store directly from your the FocusMDM dashboard.
Advantages
- Permanently private apps go through a streamlined verification process—published apps appear in the managed Google Play Store in as little as five minutes, compared to over two hours via the Play Console.
- The only store listing details required to publish an app are its title and default listing language.
Step 1 - Delegate your development publishing rights to FocusMDM
Before you can publish private apps using FocusMDM, you need to delegate publishing rights to the FocusMDM platform.
This can ONLY be done by a technical person (who completed android for work setup, has the developer account details of your Google Play Console and the gmail account that was used for the android for work setup). Note this cannot be a company Google account.
The detailed steps to set this up are explained on the Settings→Enterprise screen
NOTE: Only once this is correctly setup, will the FocusMDM Dashboard administrator user see an action button named "Publish" in private apps list screen
Step 2 - Upload your private Apps into FocusMDM
Upload the apk files.
NOTE
- You can't publish two apps with the same name and/or package identifier.
- Maximum .apk file size on the Play Store is 100MB.
Step 3 - Publish the private App to Google Play Store
Then select the "Publish" action for the file. It takes some time for app to be ready for distribution (about 5 minutes).
Reminder: The administrator user will only see an action button named "Publish" in private apps list screen if the Publishing rights have been delegated
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