App catalog

How it works

A catalog is really a set of assignments. Each app has a source, each group has a list, and the management server reconciles the two on every device check-in. The sources come in two kinds. Public apps are selected from Managed Google Play on Android or bought as licenses through Apple Business Manager (Apps and Books, formerly VPP) on iOS and macOS. Private apps are your own builds: an APK or an IPA you upload, or an Apple Custom App published privately to your organization.

Every app is then either required or optional. A required app installs silently at enrollment and reinstalls itself if a user deletes it, which is what you want for the mail client, the MFA app and the business app a role can't work without. An optional app simply appears in the store on the device, and the user installs it when needed. Self-service is the whole point: fewer tickets, and an audit trail of who took what.

Version control is where catalogs differ from stores. Android Enterprise lets you keep an app on automatic updates or hold a specific version; for private apps you pin the exact versionCode and promote it group by group. On iOS, public app updates follow the store, so pinning in practice means keeping your internal IPA on a known build and testing the next one on a pilot group first. Pin what's critical, auto-update the rest. Pinning everything creates a backlog of security patches you'll never clear.

Why it matters for a fleet

Two failure modes, both expensive. A catalog nobody uses sends people to the public store, and you inherit shadow IT. A catalog with 60 entries and no structure sends people to the helpdesk asking which of the three PDF apps is the official one.

What good hygiene looks like in practice:

• An owner named for every app, with a business reason written down next to it
• Short required list, generous optional list, and no app visible to a group that has no use for it
• Install counts reviewed each quarter, and anything at zero installs for two quarters removed
• Apple licenses reclaimed when someone leaves, instead of buying seats twice
• One pilot group that gets new versions a week before everyone else
• Consistent names and icons, because users search the catalog the way they search a store

The payoff shows up at onboarding. A new technician opens the catalog on day one, finds the eight apps his role needs, and nobody walks him through a setup sheet.

How Appaloosa handles it

Appaloosa gives each fleet its own store carrying public apps through Managed Google Play and Apple VPP alongside private APK and IPA uploads, with versions kept and assigned per group. You decide which apps install automatically and which stay available on request, settings travel with the install through managed app configuration, and removal is one action. Details are on the Mobile Application Management page.