I’ve already talked about the basics of enterprise application deployment with Windows Phone 8, which you can find in the following two posts.
Windows Phone 8 SDK- Enterprise Application Deployment
Windows Phone 8 SDK- Enterprise Applications (part 2)
In this post we’re going to look at how you can start to manage and deploy multiple enterprise applications. Of course, there will be some organisations who use an MDM provider (for example Silverback) which will facilitate the deployment of applications to specific groups of employees. However, there will be some organisations that elect not to use an MDM, and yet still want to deploy multiple enterprise applications. For this you can use some of the new APIs in Windows Phone 8 to enumerate installed applications and prompt for installation of applications.
Let’s put this in a bit of context – a common starting point is to roll out a company hub style application. By this we mean a simple enterprise application (ie signed by the enterprise for internal distribution) which might list internal news, relevant links and a list of other enterprise applications that are available for installation. The company hub might also require the user to enter credentials in order to personalise these items (eg present only applications that the user should have access to)
If the user clicks on these applications there are a number of ways that the company hub can install the selected application. Assuming that the application is stored on a remote server you can simply launch the uri pointing to the xap file.
private void InstallAppClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var url = new Uri("http://mydomain.com/myapp.xap");
Launcher.LaunchUriAsync(url);
}
Whilst this will work, assuming that the enterprise certificate that the application has been signed with is already installed on the device, it doesn’t provide a great experience for the user. Another alternative is to use the AddPackageAsync method on the InstallationManager.
private async void InstallAppClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var url = new Uri("http://mydomain.com/myapp.xap");
var status = InstallationManager.AddPackageAsync("MyApp", url);
status.Progress += UpdateProgress;
await status;
}
private void UpdateProgress(IAsyncOperationWithProgress<PackageInstallResult, uint> asyncinfo, uint progressinfo)
{
// Update UI with progress
}
The return value from the AddPackageAsync method can be used to retrieve installation progress information that can be displayed within the company hub whilst the application is being installed.
Both these alternatives download the xap in clear form from the remote server. Whilst this might be ok if the user is on an intranet, it’s not a great solution if you want to make applications accessible to remote users (which you would hope would be the case since they’re mobile….). In this case you really need to ensure the application is encrypted or protected somehow to prevent the applications from being decompiled. The script for signing the applications does not provide any level of protection – it simply invokes a native compile of the dlls and then signs both dlls and xap. As such you should consider applying your own level of protection, which in turn means we need an alternative method to install the applications via the company hub.
One solution is to package the other applications into the company hub. Each application needs to be created and then signed using the enterprise certificate. They’re then added to the company hub project with the build action property set to Content – this ensures they’re packaged with the company hub. Once the company hub has been installed the user can select one of the applications packaged with the company hub for installation. Since the application isn’t downloaded there is no way to intercept it, so no further protection is required. This method again uses the AddPackageAsync but this time with a uri that points to a file packaged with the company hub (progress reporting has been omitted for brevity). Alternatively you can also use the Launcher.LaunchFileAsync with a reference to the file but again this doesn’t report on the installation progress.
private async void InstallAppClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var file = await StorageFile.GetFileFromApplicationUriAsync(new System.Uri("ms-appx:///myapp.xap"));
var fullSystemPath = new Uri("file://" + file.Path);
await InstallationManager.AddPackageAsync("MyApp", fullSystemPath);
}
One thing to note here is the slightly unusual path syntax that is required by the AddPackageAsync method. It will not work with either a relative uri or a uri starting with ms-appx or ms-appdata.
The downside of this method is that you need to bundle all the other applications into the company hub, even if they’re not relevant to the current user. A better solution is to download an encrypted application from a remote server, decrypt it locally, and then install the application from isolated storage. In this post we won’t cover the first two steps, as this is up to the organisation as to how they wish to encrypt the application file and distribute the keys to the company hub application so it can decrypt the application file. The last step is actually similar to installing an application that is packaged with the company hub. However, this time the file is stored in isolated storage, which slightly changes the way the file path is constructed (you could also use new Uri(“ms-appdata://local/MyApp.xap”) rather than using the LocalFolder).
private async void InstallAppClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var storageFolder = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder;
var file = await storageFolder.GetFileAsync("MyApp.xap");
var fullSystemPath = new Uri("file://" + file.Path);
await InstallationManager.AddPackageAsync("MyApp", fullSystemPath);
}
In this post you’ve seen how you can install additional enterprise applications from a company hub. In deciding which method to use you should consider both the sensitivity of the application logic and the risk of data being intercepted.