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Enterprise Application Distribution

Updated 7 months ago by Sriram Kakarala

Although there are quite a lot of applications in iTunes Store, for some organizations choose to have a dedicated Enterprise iOS applications that is distributed only to the device in the organization.

Scalefusion offers you a simple and easy way to upload and distribute your Enterprise iOS applications, to all the device or devices in selected Device Profiles.

This tutorial guides you through the process of uploading your enterprise applications.

Enterprise App Store is a Paid feature post the Free Trial period.

Before You Begin

  1. Make sure Enterprise Store has been enabled for your account.
  2. Your account has been allocated the space required for your enterprise Application. To know more about space allocation, please visit here.

Video Guide:

Please watch the video below to get a visual walkthrough.

Overview

Scalefusion offers you to upload your enterprise applications in the following two ways,

  1. Upload the IPA file to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Upload the manifest.plist file if the IPA file is self-hosted on your servers.

Uploading an IPA File

This option is useful where you have the IPA file but it is not hosted on any of your servers. Using this method you can upload the IPA files to Scalefusion dashboard.

  1. Login to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store section.
  3. Click on Upload New App > Upload iOS App.
  4. You will be shown a dialog with 2 buttons-
    1. Upload using IPA file.
    2. Upload using Plist link.
  5. Select Upload using IPA file.
  6. Either Drag & Drop the IPA file or Click on Browse Files and browse the file on your machine.
  7. Once you upload the file, Scalefusion checks the validity of the IPA file to make sure that it is an Enterprise application. This process will take around 3-5 minutes of time depending upon the size of application being uploaded.
  8. If the application verification succeeds, then you will be shown a dialog with the App Information, with the list of Device Profiles where it can be Published.
  9. If you want to Publish this application now, select the Device Profiles where you want to publish this and click PUBLISH.
  10. If you want to Publish it later, just close the dialog.

This option is quite handy if you have self-hosted the IPA file on your servers and/or do not want to upload the IPA file to an external server. Follow the below steps to upload a plist file to Scalefusion dashboard,

  1. Login to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store section.
  3. Click on Upload New App > Upload iOS App.
  4. You will be shown a dialog with 2 buttons-
    1. Upload using IPA file.
    2. Upload using Plist link.
  5. Select Upload using Plist link.
  6. Here you will see a text box to enter the link of your manifest.plist file. Please copy/paste the link to your manifest file here.
  7. Scalefusion will now start reading the plist file and validate the IPA file and other entries. Note we do not store the IPA file, just download it temporarily for validating it.
  8. If the application verification succeeds, then you will be shown a dialog with the App Information, with the list of Device Profiles where it can be Published.
  9. If you want to Publish this application now, select the Device Profiles where you want to publish this and click PUBLISH.

    Publishing the Application to Device profiles

    1. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store. Click on the application that you have added. This will open up a panel from the right hand side with the following information & options.
      1. View Options
        1. App Information.
        2. View Status of Installations on devices.
      2. Action Commands
        1. PUBLISH
        2. UNINSTALL
        3. REFRESH
        4. DELETE | DELETE & UNINSTALL
    2. Click on the PUBLISH button. This will open a dialog which will show you all the Device Profiles that you have created. Alongwith, following additional settings can be configured:
      1. Remove App on Management Removal - Users can control whether they want the published app to be removed from device after device management removal.
      2. Prevent Backup to external sources - With this flag user can control whether the app's data has to be backed up when the device data is backed up to iCloud, using the iTunes ID on the device if available.
        By default both the flags are checked. You can uncheck them as per requirement.
      3. Configure Installation mode: To override the installation mode selected at profile level (Restrictions > App Management Settings) the admin can configure how an app has to be published at per-app level. Following are the three options to choose from:
        1. Mode as per Profile: The application would be silently installed or added to app catalog as per profile settings
        2. Silently Install: This would attempt a silent installation of the application on the device. Silent installation works for Supervised devices.
        3. Add to Catalog: Adds this app to catalog for user initiated installation. If App catalog is not enabled at profile level then the app will be silently installed.
    3. Select the Device Profile(s) where you want to install this application and click PUBLISH on the dialog.
    You can click View Status link to see on how many devices it is installed.

Updating an Enterprise Application

If you want to update your Enterprise application, please follow the steps below,

  1. Login to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store section.
  3. Click on the App that you want to update. A panel from right-hand side will be opened.
  4. On the right-hand side panel, click on UPDATE App button.
  5. You will be shown a dialog to Upload the New Ipa or Update the Plist file.
  6. If you are uploading the IPA file choose Upload using IPA file.
  7. If you are using self-hosted file then use Upload using Plist link.
    1. You can copy/paste if the URL has changed Or just click on Refresh icon.
  8. After this step, Scalefusion verifies the new IPA file and if the application verification succeeds, then you will be shown a dialog with the App Information, with the list of Device Profiles where it can be Published.

Uninstalling an Enterprise Application

To Uninstall an Enterprise Application, follow the steps below,

  1. Login to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store section.
  3. Click on the App that you want to uninstall. A panel from right hand side will be opened.
  4. On the right hand side panel, click on UNINSTALL button.
  5. Select the Device Profiles where you want to uninstall and click UNINSTALL button.
    1. Note that if this app had been set as Single App Mode, then the App will be uninstalled and the devices will be out of Single App Mode. However, the last profile settings will still be applied.

Deleting an Enterprise Application

You can either choose to Delete the application or Delete & Uninstall the application. Follow the steps below to do the same,

  1. Login to Scalefusion Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Application Management > Enterprise Store section.
  3. Click on the App that you want to delete. A panel from right hand side will be opened.
  4. On the right hand side panel, click on Bin icon below the package name.
  5. Here you can choose from either of the 2 options,
    1. Delete  - It would delete the IPA file from Dashboard.
    2. Delete & Uninstall - It would delete the IPA file from Dashboard and also Uninstall the app from device.

Stop Rollout of an Enterprise Application

Sometimes you may want to stop the rollout of Enterprise applications that have been published to groups or profiles, for example if a wrong version is being pushed. You can stop the rollout of such apps which only unpublishes the app from selected Groups or Profiles.

This action won't uninstall the app. It simply stops the rollout of app in case a wrong version is pushed.

To stop rollout,

  1. Select the Enterprise app and click on Stop Rollout in the right side panel.
    Stop rollout appears if the app version has been published on atleast one device group/profile.
  1. This opens the following dialog box. Choose the Group or Profile on which you want to stop the app's rollout. Only the entities where the app has been published will be displayed here.
  2. After selecting, click on the button Stop rollout
  3. When executed,
    1. The application will be unpublished and it will not be installed on devices where it is not installed yet.
    2. The Stop rollout button will no longer be visible in the right side panel

Important Points on Stop Rollout's execution

  • You cannot stop rollout of an app that is already installed on device.
  • On devices where downloading of app has not started, app will not be installed.
  • On devices newly enrolled or moved to a device profile, the app will not be installed after stop rollout.
  • In App Catalog the app will be removed as it is no longer published.
  • On such apps, View Status shows the App Status as Rollout Stopped.

Head over to our Application Configuration guide to learn how to configure iOS applications from Dashboard.

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