How to distribute UWP Enterprise app

Question

Our company is developing a Universal Windows Platform (Windows 10) app that we want to distribute in the "Enterprise". We don't want to make it public through the Windows Store. In the normal case, the devices are unmanaged ("bring your own device").

For Windows Phone 8, we signed our apps with a Mobile Enterprise certificate that we bought from Symantec. Then we distributed the file together with an enrollment token. Installation was a two-step process and fairly simple. I haven't found something that says that this can be applied to a UWP app.

Is there a similar flow for UWP to Windows 10 Mobile?

What I tried: I have found right-click, Store, Create App Packages... in Visual Studio to create a package with appx extension. I also read that you should enable Sideload apps under Settings in the phone. But how to get the package to install on a phone over-the-air?

Simply trying to download the appx file from a web server didn't work. (Just downloaded the file and didn't know how to open it.)

Answer 1

We deploy ours through our private section in the Microsoft business store at https://businessstore.microsoft.com/en-us/

Just log into the business store and invite the developer account you used to create the app to publish LOB apps for you.

Once invited, the developer can select that the app is only visible to your private store when they publish - other than that it's just like publishing any app to the windows store.

Answer 2

We do this by enabling side loading and using a PowerShell script to install. With our scenario all devices are domain joined and we are able to use Config Manager to roll out the application.

With PowerShell we use the following command to uninstall

 $app = get-appxpackage -Name My.UWP.App if($app -ne $NULL) {remove-appxpackage $app.PackageFullName} 

To Install you'll need to make sure that the certificate is installed

certutil.exe -addstore TrustedPeople $CertificatePath

Then use Add-AppxPackage command to install the app

Add-AppxPackage -Path [package path] -DependencyPath [dependencies path] -ForceApplicationShutdown

Answer 3

The newly introduced package format MSIX could be a rescue.
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/overview

You can think it as a kind of appx or setup.exe file. The Appx can be packaged to MSIX format also.

For me, Advanced Installer gives good experience to make a package.

Note that Microsoft released official MSIX repackaging tool. It's re-packaging, not packaging. This means the tool requires already packaged single file.
- MSIX Packaging Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/msix-packaging-tool/9n5lw3jbcxkf?activetab=pivot:overviewtab