The Google Play Store is the best way to get apps to your Android devices in the industry today. Known for scale, security, and consumer-simple ease of use, did you know that it’s now easier than ever to manage as well? For years now, VMware has partnered with Google to allow administrators to manage app approval through an iframe loaded within the Workspace ONE UEM console. Recently, Google has rolled out some exciting new features to the managed Play Store that can be used through the iframe without an upgrade to your Workspace ONE UEM console.
Private Apps
The first new feature makes internal apps even easier to manage. Gone are the days of having to fill out long developer surveys and adding screenshot after screenshot just to get an app out to your users as soon as possible. Now all that needs to be done is to add a Public App through Workspace ONE, select the Private App option once loaded into the iframe, add the APK and name and hit Create. This will greatly speed up app deployment for everyone and all the extra features such as full store description, store images, custom privacy policy, and more are still possible through Advanced options. Not only that, apps uploaded through this process have the $25 developer fee waived.
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Web Apps
The next feature is for web app deployment. No matter what your use case for providing simple web apps to your users, we’ve got just the thing. Easily choose between a Full screen, Standalone, or Minimal UI display mode and let Android do the rest. In Full screen mode, the web app will use the entire screen and behave like a native application. Standalone mode shows the status bar and navigation buttons. With the Minimal UI option, the web app would appear more like a website and show the URL bar and refresh buttons as well. The managed Play Store then treats the web app just like any other application and makes it simple to deploy and manage alongside the rest of your applications.
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Collections
The last feature will help make managed Google Play more familiar and easier for your users, the ability to create app collections. This allows a curated experience where work applications can be organized into groups just like the consumer Play Store and keeps users productive instead of spending time looking for the right app to download. To create a collection, you just need to navigate to the Organize Apps option within the iframe and start adding groups. Once a group is added you can add your apps and your users can see it in minutes, you can also copy an existing collection and reposition either the collections themselves or the apps within your collections.
“Note: Once an environment has begun using collections the managed Google Play cannot be reverted to an earlier state. Because the change to collections cannot be rolled back, customers are highly encouraged to test the feature in a sandbox environment to ensure it aligns with the desired end-user experience and functionality before rolling it out to any production environments.”
Give these new features a try today and stay tuned for news of more improvements. Google and VMware together are always working hard at evolving the Android experience for everyone. To learn more about these features and considerations, refer to this article on My Workspace ONE.
