How to distribute a windows phone 7 application from within an intranet - windows-phone-7

I have a windows phone 7 application which I need to distribute to elements of my company. How can I achieve this? I do not want the application to be on the marketplace because it is a corporate application which should only be visible and used by elements of the organization.
Is this possible?
Best regards,
Bruno

There are 2 options currently open to you:
You could use Beta distribution as Tom says, but that's limited to 90 days and no updates.
You could also publish the application on Marketplace, but make it hidden so that other users cannot search for it. You would need to send your users a link so that they could install the app. See MSDN documentation.
However for the 2nd option you should beware that anyone would be able to install the application if they know the link for it. So if you need it to be secure you need to provide some other mechanism to lock it down.

There has been news about a private distribution model for corporate applications, but this is not available yet. For now you can use the private beta distribution for this purpose, all you need is a list of the Live IDs used by the people within your company.
I wrote a blog explaining private beta functionality, you can find it here

Related

How I apply review to get publish_actions permission for a Windows application written in Win API/C++?

I created and used application softwares(exe file written in C++ with Win SDK) of Windows OS(Win7) which has a function to upload(post) user photos to Facebook. They were working fine but now it is not possible to post photos to Facebook and I got to know I need get my application reviewd for public_actions permission. I tried to do it but could not find way to submit since there's no category for Windows application. How can I do it? I think the reviewers need to 'run' the app and it looks OK for andriod, iOS, Win8 apps, and Web site since reviewers can access to them by codes or URL for the apps but I have no idea how to make it for my Windows application. It is big size application with lots of images over 1Gbytes. Will it be OK to use an FTP account for the reviewers to download and review it?
In your review notes you can explicitly mention that this is a Windows application. You will need to provide as much screenshots as possible or preferably, a screencast where you show how you use the Facebook integration.
To get all the required fields, you can fill in the website for your application (if you have one) or an other website. Just make sure to mention that in your reviewer notes.
That should work with getting your app reviews.
ps: this question actually is not appropriate for Stackoverflow. I suggested using the Facebook Developer Community group for these kind of questions (non-technical).

Is it possible to see how many people uninstalled my app on Windows Phone?

Basically, on the Windows Phone developer site it shows how many installs your app has, but is there any way to see how many of these people have uninstalled it; so that you can see how many are actually using it?
This metric is not available in DevCenter. But you can use Distimo and/or Flurry to get user retention, conversion rates etc.

WP7 - selling extensions

I'm trying to create some application for Windows Phone >= 7.1
During plannin my work and specyfiong technical requirements I've come across one problem.
I wan't to have free application with basic functionality. And then it should be extendable with some non-free extensions (dlls?, databases?, SaaS?)
Is it possible at the moment to use some MS api/app/etc. to be able to publish such extensions and sell them? What is the best way to do this if there is more than one solution?
Thank you for any help.
As of right now (June 2012), in-app purchases are not supported. Your only choices, then are being a paid app and supporting trial mode.
The only way you can do this at present is to handle the additional purchases yourself.
You'd have to set up a website which customers could create an account on and purchase extensions through, then have them also log into your app with those account details to determine what additional data to download or functions to enable.
You could be smart and include the website functionality into your app with a browser control. Take a look at the Amazon Kindle app for an example of how they accomplish it.

Is there any way to deploy a Wp7 app to a phone without publishing or using Visual Studio?

I have a Wp7 app (ready in a xap), and I'd like to give it to a client, so he can use it in 5-10 devices. But it is an "internal" client for our service, so I'd rather not publish it on WP Marketplace for all to see...
Is there any reasonable way to do this?
when you upload app on marketplace you can set it as private so only users with direct link can see/install it. There was an app which hacked WP7 that allows you to install apps without marketplace but I've heard it's not legal anymore*.
*search for it because I'm not sure about this one.
edit: http://www.electronista.com/articles/12/01/02/chevronwp7.runs.out.of.tokens.may.not.renew/
Maybe you can try http://labs.chevronwp7.com/
EDIT : Sorry, it seems that all tokens are sold out, so this is not solution for you.
As pointed out by others, you can publish a application on the marketplace as a beta, allowing 5 users to test it using their Live IDs.
But all unlocked phones can have a XAP installed. Generally, Windows Phone applications aren't designed for internal distribution. If you don't intend to publish the application on the marketplace at any point, you need to estimate in the cost of $100 per phone, per year, for the usage of your application.
I'll recommend you contact Microsoft, if you need a specialized deal.

Non-dev-tools Windows Phone 7 emulation

In developing a number of WP7 apps, I have a need to show clients how the app will be when deployed. The clients are a) not in the same location as I am, b) not technical at all, and c) may not even be using a PC. The purpose is to demo, get feedback and make any needed changes.
I'm not finding any realistic options to just simply show them what it would look, feel and run on a Windows Phone 7 (using the ApplicationBar, etc.). I found this link - http://www.redmondpie.com/standalone-windows-phone-7-series-emulator-9140536/ - but it's rather hacky for me to ask someone to do to set up an emulator on their machine without also installing VS Express, etc.
Does anyone know of any links to an official emulator that can be run on a PC, has a simple install and can load WP7 apps?
Have you considered using a product such as Citrix GoTo. Clients do not need to be particularly technical to join such a meeting, you can then take them through a demo. This will cost you though.
A free alternative would be to set aside a PC running the emulator with your software loaded. Create a VPN for you clients to connect to and let them use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the PC. They can then play around with it remotely.
Have you considered using SketchFlow? Although by default the UI is "sketchy" (sorry), you can apply styles to the controls you drop on your pages, including the very same styles that are used by Windows Phone controls.
If you use a Silverlight SketchFlow project, you can deploy the content to a web server and provide a link that can be consumed on any machine that will render Silverlight content...they can go through the navigation, provide feedback, etc.
Christian Schormann has a writeup on what is required to use it in the pre-release tools... http://electricbeach.org/?p=573
You should take a look at this: http://justinangel.net/WindowsPhone7EmulatorAutomation. I believe it will answer your question exactly.

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