Distribute Enterprise app in house

Question

I built an app for a company, then they bought an Enterprise license and are now ready to distribute the app. I have been following this article: Distributing Your Application In-House I have successfully created the .ipa file, but then it just says "Distribute the iOS App file using MDM." with no link or any explanation of what that means. Further research is just making me more confused. I've found articles like this: Add MDM servers which uses terms like "MDM Vendor". What the heck is an MDM Vendor? Surely the Apple Enterprise program comes with a method to distribute an app without having to buy 3rd party software, no? Is there any kind of tutorial out there that can tell me step-by-step instructions for how to distribute this app in layman's terms that I can understand? Thanks.

Answer 1

You can distribute your Enterprise app without MDM. The way it works is basically you upload the .ipa file and a manifest .plist file to a website somewhere. Then you just put a hyperlink that connects to the .plist file. The end user uses a browser on their device, taps the link, and it installs the app on their device automatically. An easy-to-follow tutorial can be found here. The only problem is that the tutorial uses an older version of xcode that generates the .plist file for you. Xcode 6 will not generate the .plist file, but you can find a sample file here. Just replace the URL of the .ipa file, the bundle identifier, bundle version, and title with your own values.