Enterprise App Distribution

Enterprise app distribution is how a company puts its own app on staff phones without ever listing it in the public store. The apps we mean are working tools, like the driver's delivery app, the warehouse scanner, or the nurses' rota. No customer will ever open any of them, so there is no reason for the whole world to download them. Keeping them private is the easy part, because the phones themselves are what make this complicated.

There are three normal ways to do it. The first is a business account, which Apple and Google both run, where you upload the app once and pick exactly who gets it. The second is a private listing, where the app sits in the ordinary store but never turns up in a search, so only invited staff can install it. The third is an install link that pulls the app from your own server, which Apple allows only for companies accepted into its enterprise programme.

When Linkysoft builds a staff-only app, the first question is who owns the phone, because everything else follows from the answer. A company phone can be enrolled and managed, so the app arrives on its own and the office can wipe the work data when someone leaves. A personal phone gives you none of that, because all you can do is invite. The member of staff then has to accept, and you should expect about a quarter of them not to.

The cost that catches people out is renewal, because certificates and enrolments run out once a year without warning anyone. When one lapses, every copy of the app stops opening on the same morning, all at once, on every phone. That is not a thing you can quietly fix before lunch, so put the date in a shared calendar and the account in two people's names.

The risk runs the other way too, because once staff install work apps from a link, installing from a link starts to feel normal. That is exactly what a fake message counts on, and sooner or later somebody will send a lookalike with your logo on it. So keep the way apps arrive dull and identical, and write down what staff may install on a work phone. Linkysoft handles distribution as part of the mobile app build, and where staff carry customer data we review it with the cybersecurity team before the first version goes out.