14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Internet giant Google announced the availability of a new way of distributing internal applications through its official Google Play Store, in the form of Google Play Private Channels.
The new feature is meant to help Google Apps customers distribute Android applications to their employees, separately from the hundreds of thousands of apps that are already available through the portal.
Through these channels, enterprises should find it easier than ever to push internal Android apps to their employees.
“Whether you’ve built a custom expense reporting app for employees or a conference room finder, the Google Play Private Channel is designed to make your organization’s internal apps quick and easy for employees to find,” Ellie Powers, product manager, Google Play, explains in a blog post.
“Once your company has loaded these internal apps using the Google Play Developer Console, users just need to log in with their company email address to browse the Private Channel and download apps.”
Domain users can register with the Android Developer Console in order to publish Android applications to the Private Channel, but will have to contact Google Apps domain administrators for that.
“The publisher account owner who registered with the Android Developer Console must be a Google Apps user in the same domain, such as internal IT staff, and not external developers,” Google explains.
Furthermore, the company will provide Google Apps domain administrators with the possibility to select the specific users or user groups who receive access to the Private Channel to download internal applications.
Through the Google Play store, application publishing features are available for customers, including user authentication, virus and malware detection, device targeting, payment, user rating, and user feedback.
The Private Channel feature is meant for all Google Apps for Business, Education or Government customers to take advantage of. Full details on how organizations can come up with their own channels in the storefront can be found on this page.