[android] Google Play Private Channel for Google Apps. Easily distribute internal Android apps

[Arthur]

This looks good, but I'm not sure how useful this will be to schools.

 

Source: Google Enterprise Blog (via The Next Web)

 

A new way to distribute your internal Android apps

The Google Play Store is the place to find Android apps like the Google+ app, the Google Drive app and hundreds of thousands more. Today we’re expanding the Google Play Store for our Google Apps customers to help you distribute internal apps to your employees through the Google Play Private Channel.

 

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. 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.

 

These changes make it easier than ever to get the internal Android apps your company develops into employees’ hands. If you’re a Google Apps for Business, Education or Government customer you can learn more about how to create your organization’s own Google Play Private Channel in our Help Center.

 

In short, the Google Play Private Channel is designed so that employees can easily find and download internal apps. Once a company has loaded the 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 install apps. (Source)

 

http://i.imgur.com/6obqm.jpg

Edited December 4, 2012 by Arthur

[CyberNerd]

pretty useful I would say - it allows you to centrally deploy android applications to user owned devices on your domain.

 

 

 

another update allows us to centrally manage lock screens.

 

Control Lock Screen Widgets through Google Apps Device Policy

Posted: 04 Dec 2012 11:11 AM PST

Lock Screen Widgets let you scan recent Gmail messages, Calendar entries, and other app content without unlocking an Android 4.2+ device screen. This update allows domain admins to enable/disable lock screen widgets through the control panel. The Lock Screen Widgets security setting requires that users update to the latest version of Google Apps Device Policy (version 4.13 or higher) from the Play Store.

 

NOTE: Lock screen widgets are disabled by default. If users have already added widgets, they will disappear in compliance with the setting in the control panel.

Edited December 5, 2012 by CyberNerd

[Arthur]

pretty useful I would say - it allows you to centrally deploy Android applications to user owned devices on your domain.

Until you can deploy third-party apps from the Play Store I can't see many schools using this.

 

There are, however, some limitations worth noting. Each organization using Google Apps is allowed only one Private Channel: even if your Google Apps account is setup with multiple domains, you can only have one channel for your entire organization. You can allow multiple publishers in your organization to publish applications on your channel, and each publisher can operate independently, but the limit is still one.

 

Furthermore, an app cannot be published to both the public Google Play store and a Private Channel (though Google hints this functionality could arrive in a future release). This also means you cannot publish an existing app to the Private Channel, although you can publish an app you own that’s currently on the public Google Play Store to your Private Channel by changing the publishing option to Restrict Availability in your Google Play Developer Console. You also cannot publish an app to a specific group of users, though you can target a specific country or specific device models.

 

Last but not least, Google Apps users must still pay the $25 publisher registration fee. Google says this is because "all publishers have the same set of basic rights, features, and responsibilities, whether they’re publishing apps publicly or to a Private Channel."

[CyberNerd]

It would be quite a good incentive for getting our student programmers to come up with something useful.

[plexer]

Seems to only be for company created apps though which makes it limited.

 

Ben

[CyberNerd]

Seems to only be for company created apps though which makes it limited.

 

The OCR GCSE Computing controlled assessment is for students to create an Android app.