4 Steps To Develop A Custom Android App For Your Business

Google unveils a novel way that allows companies to set up their custom-build apps and then distribute them via Google's Private Channel on Google Play Store.

As per the Google's announcement for Google's Clients, ‘we are now allowing IT shops to develop their personal business apps via Google Play Private Channel and then share out to the staff members on the Play store without allowing access to the ordinary people.

"No matter what type of business application you have built; either it's a conference room finder app or a standard financial app, the Google Play Private Channel is intended to distribute your company's internal apps to the employees easy and quick. You can quickly load the internal applications with the help of Developer console available on the Google Play store. The employee's duty is to sign in by using their company's official email address and look for the Google's private channel to download applications," Ellie Powers (Google Play Product Manager) said in a blog post.

As a matter of fact, this isn't a new concept. As we have discussed earlier that there are several retailers already helping organizations to build their business application stores for iOS, BlackBerry and Android devices. Let's take an example of Apple Inc., which has assisted sharing of business apps via its iOS Developer Enterprise Program and the App Store Volume Purchasing Program. But, on the other hand, the Android's open nature destined that you will continually fabricate ritual apps and load them up to the gadgets via Google's Private Channel. It seems to be a more opportune for staff members to acquire employer specific apps.

VMware alone, among numerous other companies approaching the concept of Dual-Persona Smartphones, which will isolate the phone's work portion of the phone's personal portion.

You can enable Private Channel through Google Apps CP (control panel) because it's limited to applications for education, business, and management clients. Other limitations include;

• Businesses can't have more than one channel, even though they have multiple domains on the Google Apps' account.
• As an individual business entity, you would not be able to target particular sets of users, even though you can distribute an app targeting specific device models or countries.

Now comes, how you can set up your Google Play Private Channel.

Mainly, you need to fulfill two significant requirements for creating a Google Play Private Channel:

1. Allow the access of the user to the Admin console via Google Play Private Channel.
   
2. Now you need to sign up with the Developer Console through which you will be able to load Android apps to the Google Play Private Channel. After registering with the Google Play Console, you will become a domain administrator. Now you'll be capable of providing Developer Console access to other clients, or authorizing a third-party vendor to load applications to domain's Private Channel.
   

As mentioned earlier, as an administrator, you can allow the Google Play Private Channel with the help of their Android applications for education, work, or management Admin console.

1. First of all, you need to log in to the Admin console.
   
2. Now click on the ‘Apps' tab, select ‘Add Google services,' and hit it off to open the filter panel. Now you can see ‘Show top featured services’ checkbox, de-select it.
   
3. Now the next step is to activate the Developer Console for company users whom you desire to load apps to the in-house Google Play Private Channel.
   
4. Now click and select the ‘Device Management' tab.
   
5. Now click on the ‘Mobile,' you'll see ‘Device management settings’ tab, and move to ‘Google Play settings’.
   
6. Now you need to ‘Enable' following features as well:
   

• If you want users to get access to the Google Play Private Channel and download apps from there; just tick ‘Enable’ option.
  
• If you want users to load apps to the Google Play Private Channel, You need to tick ‘Enable’ option.
  

When it comes to publishing your application to the Google Play Private Channel, the domain admin should sign up at https://play.google.com/apps/publish. Here, we advise domain administrators to develop active role accounts to load applications to the Google Play Private Channel. It will help you retain the app access, in case staff member leaves the company.

Now comes the point; how to download the application from the Google Play Private Channel. When an administrator gets full rights to the Google Play Private Channel, then it's the time to download applications from there with PlayStore. If your device doesn't have Play Store application, you can go to the Google Play Store to get it.

To enter into the private channel, you need to do the following steps;

• Open the Google Play Store
  
• Click on Apps
  
• Click on Categories
  
• Click ‘company's name' on your Android device