Inhouse distribution vs Custom Apps, best practice?

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Created Jun ’20

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Hi there,

as a business we do now hear since at least WWDC 2019 more often that Custom Apps are the recommended way to distribute inhouse apps to our MDM managed devices.

Currently we do run a bunch of apps relying on some private APIs (and yes we understand the associated risks). There are simply some special edge cases and requirements due to some legacy infrastructure components, which we cannot easily change at once. Some apps do heavily rely on Webviews for example, and would probably in its current state also not make it into the App Store.

My question now - does anyone know if the Enterprise developer program with its inhouse provisioning profiles will live on for longer or if there are any plans to effectively sunset it? Obviously, even if I see the benefits of Custom Apps in terms of Testflight and provisioning profile expiration, we would as of today be unable to get our workarounds based on private APIs through the store review process.

Our MDM solution is unable to push install public store apps onto our managed devices (even if these are custom apps) - this is only possible with inhouse apps.

Also, being dependent on external review processes, this means we would loose time for critical bugfix deployments.

So there are many reasons here for which I would appreciate some open communication by Apple, to be able to plan accordingly (which, in many enterprise environments, typically means budget planning today for project execution in 3 years).

Thanks a lot for any feedback to this topic,

enjoy remaining WWDC20 :)

Answered by in 615609022

We cannot comment on any future plans or timelines for the Enterprise Program. However, as was stated last year and this year in the Custom Apps sessions, the majority of our enterprise customers should be looking at Custom Apps as the way forward.

It looks like you have 3 basic concerns:

Private API usage: As you stated, the usage of these APIs comes at a huge risk to you and your users, and we don't recommend their use in any case. Their functionality and their availability is subject to change at any time, without notice, and could severely interrupt your development efforts. If there are particular problems you are solving with private APIs, it may be best to post about those in the forum and ask if there are alternatives to achieving what you want using public APIs. There have been many new APIs introduced and it's quite possible that you can now solve for your use case without resorting to private APIs at all.
Review Times: Most apps are reviewed within a few hours, so this shouldn’t be a blocker for you, especially if you have a controlled deployment process to maintain business continuity. Additionally, Test Flight allows you to publish to internal users without a review so you can do immediate testing with a core group of testers.
MDM Capabilities: It seems you are saying that your MDM is not compatible with Custom Apps? What MDM are you using? Custom Apps are not public, and would be made available through Apple Business Manager to distribute via your MDM.

I would recommend trying the process of moving to Custom Apps with one app to see how it all works. Please check out the videos from Session 304 last year and Session 10667 this year for information on how to get started.

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Answer 1

OP

Apple

Jun ’20

Accepted Answer

We cannot comment on any future plans or timelines for the Enterprise Program. However, as was stated last year and this year in the Custom Apps sessions, the majority of our enterprise customers should be looking at Custom Apps as the way forward.

It looks like you have 3 basic concerns:

Private API usage: As you stated, the usage of these APIs comes at a huge risk to you and your users, and we don't recommend their use in any case. Their functionality and their availability is subject to change at any time, without notice, and could severely interrupt your development efforts. If there are particular problems you are solving with private APIs, it may be best to post about those in the forum and ask if there are alternatives to achieving what you want using public APIs. There have been many new APIs introduced and it's quite possible that you can now solve for your use case without resorting to private APIs at all.
Review Times: Most apps are reviewed within a few hours, so this shouldn’t be a blocker for you, especially if you have a controlled deployment process to maintain business continuity. Additionally, Test Flight allows you to publish to internal users without a review so you can do immediate testing with a core group of testers.
MDM Capabilities: It seems you are saying that your MDM is not compatible with Custom Apps? What MDM are you using? Custom Apps are not public, and would be made available through Apple Business Manager to distribute via your MDM.

I would recommend trying the process of moving to Custom Apps with one app to see how it all works. Please check out the videos from Session 304 last year and Session 10667 this year for information on how to get started.

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Answer 2

durchstarter OP

Jun ’20

Hi, thanks for replying. Regarding the Custom Apps support, we are currently using MobileIron, and are unable to push install those custom apps that we added & licensed through ABM. This might as well be a MobileIron implementation issue, so I will ask their support for help. We did set up a Jamf trial right now, as MobileIron is lagging behind with new features recently, therefore I will cross check Jamf behaviour for Custom Apps installation as well.

(In our MobileIron Core instance, you may send an installation notification to the device for inhouse apps only. This would bring up a installation prompt on non-supervised devices, and just install for supervised devices. The option is greyed out/not offered for any apps which come from the App Store, therefore Custom Apps affected as well.)

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