Inside Windows Phone 72: Deploying Windows Phone apps for the Enterprise

This week’s Inside Windows Phone was written and recorded by Matthijs Hoekstra, senior product marketing manager for Windows Phone. -- Larry

In this week’s Inside Windows Phone, we talked with Rob Tiffany about publishing apps for Windows Phone for the Enterprise. There are a few different possibilities to start distributing your applications to your users. In the video we talked about three different possibilities:

1. Through the store

2. As a beta

3. Private distribution

Through the store

When distributing apps through the store the process is exactly the same as apps for consumers. You build your app and submit it so Microsoft can certify the app. If you access corporate data you need to make sure Microsoft has access to a test account which they need to validate the application. Testing is the same as any other application and you need to fulfill all store policies.

You can choose to publish the app hidden so it can only be installed when users have the deep link to the app. Best practice is to secure your corporate data with an login because when other people get access to the deeplink they can all install the application.

Beta apps

The 2^nd way is to distribute the app as a beta app in the store. You need to provide all live id of your users and send them the link to the store. The advantage of beta is they don't expire anymore. If you want to remove access to the application for your users you need to build in a mechanism yourself. You can't force the apps to be removed from the phone once the users have the app installed. The check if the user is allowed to the beta is only performed during install

Private distribution

The last option is to side load apps. This can be done through an MDM solution like intune or you can sideload apps through email or website. Let's get into a little bit more detail how you can privately distribute your applications.

First step is to create a developer account at http://dev.windowsphone.com/. You need to make sure to create a company account and not an individual developer account. As a part of this process, Microsoft will ask for some proof if you are really the company you tell us you are.

Once you have created this developer account you can buy an Enterprise Mobile Signing Certificate from Symantec. Currently we only support Symantec certificates to sign your corporate Windows Phone applications.

For all the details, check out the video and full write-up on Channel 9.