Mobile application availability
Like the fulfillmenttools API, mobile applications have a release life cycle, but it differs slightly. Here, we provide information about the available distribution channels and recommendations for distributing them on your devices.
Recommended way of distribution
We recommend using a mobile device management solution (MDM) to distribute our apps to your devices. This allows you to stay in control of the app distribution process. An MDM solution allows for controlled rollouts, internal testing of releases, immediate distribution of critical updates, and rollbacks, thus helping ensure an uninterrupted operations process. To provide the fulfillmenttools applications to your MDM, we recommend using our Artifact Registry or REST API.
Alpha channel
The Alpha channel is our internal channel for testing new mobile applications. It is for internal use only, we do not recommend using this version.
Beta channel
Before our apps are released for general availability (GA), they can be tried out from the Beta channel. This channel is accessible to external users, and it's useful to catch potential issues early, prepare your workers for app changes, and familiarize yourself with new features before a full rollout. We recommend participating in the Beta channel with a small portion of your used devices.
How to access
If you distribute our apps to your devices using the Google Play Store, please contact us to enroll in the Beta program. Once you have been added to the program, you can access the app's Beta version directly in the Google Play Store and automatically receive Beta updates.
If you are using the Google Artifact Registry, you can directly access the current Beta releases from the repository. Beta releases are named accordingly and can be downloaded from the repository when a Beta version is available.
Distribution channels
We offer three different distribution channels for our customers to access our apps.
Google Artifact Registry
The Android app packages for our apps can be accessed via our Google Artifact Registry. The Artifact Registry can be used to directly or automatically download available app packages. The registry contains the latest Alpha, Beta, and GA versions of our apps and previous app versions. The Artifact Registry for each application can be accessed via the following links:
Google Play Store
We discourage the use of the Google Play Store to distribute our apps. Things like controlled rollouts or rollbacks are not possible.
The Play Store offers a quick and easy way to distribute our apps to your devices. The apps can be found here:
As most devices have access to the Play Store, this is the easiest way to get set up and start using our apps. While the Play Store is a convenient way to download our apps on your devices and offers several advantages, like automatic updates, we generally discourage its use as it has several limitations that can impact your operations.
If the install channel is switched from the Play Store to another method or vice versa, the application must be reinstalled and set up again.
While we thoroughly test our applications before release and communicate any potentially breaking changes, issues that require a speedy update can still arise. However, updates distributed via the Play Store can take several days or, in rare cases, more than a week due to the Play Store's unpredictable review process. Additionally, a rollback of the app version via the Play Store is impossible. A gradual rollout of updates is also only possible to a limited extent.
REST API
We offer a REST API to download our app packages directly. However, this API is currently being reworked and is, therefore, not available at the moment. We will provide an update here as soon as it is available. Should you require access to the REST API, please contact us.
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