A recent demo and conversation with a medical eHealth company got us thinking: there are a lot of ways to make a mobile deployment work.
This company provided a particularly interesting and complicated use case. With a focus on electronic health, they’ve begun evolving into the mobile app space. Recently, they’ve been working on piloting an app. They also want to white label the app while maintaining control over it, like they would on a public app store.
In a traditional mobile deployment, a customer might have 5,000 individuals they need to give access to. Through one App47 account, they can load users, set permissions, create groups, etc., before giving those users access to a set of apps. This company, on the other hand, wanted not only to white label App47 (which we’re happy to do)–they also wanted to enable their customers to control their end-users.
The… double-white app label?
In a sense, it’s double white labeling: the company white labels our product, and then the company’s customers white label the product again. They want to, basically, be an App47–to be able to control users while at the same time giving customers some latitude.
This presents a few unique challenges. White labeling our product is easy–customers can change the URL, fonts, colors, etc.–but this company wanted to have fine grain access control for the app, and for customers to be able to manage everything. In practice, this means re-signing the app for each one of their customers. (We solved this problem with a script.) This ‘double white labeling’ process is complex and requires a few extra steps.
In the solution we came up with, we accomplish everything this company wants: they’ll have their existing release process, and once that’s done, we can re-sign the app and distribute it amongst their customers, who will retain the ability alter access controls, user preferences, and more.
If all of this sounds a little bit complicated, it is and it isn’t. Yes, the deployment is complex, but as we were building it out, we realized we already had many of the pieces in place needed to make this deployment work. All it took to really get things going was an understanding of what the company wanted, and a few slight tweaks. It wasn’t long before we were up and running with a workable solution.
The takeaway for us is this: no matter how complex your deployment may seem, chances are, we can find a way to make it work. If you’ve struggled with figuring out a deployment solution for your mobile strategy, shoot us an email at info@app47.com so we can help.
