Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming

Side-loading for LOB Apps in an Organization

As mentioned earlier, the main alternative to the Windows Store is side-loading of apps. That process is simpler in some respects than placing an app in the store. For example, it isn't necessary to supply the information that people need when shopping in the store.

Keep in mind, though, that you can distribute your line of business apps through the store if you like. The benefits of the store, such as the updating pipeline, are then available to you. The Windows Store includes a Business category for such apps. However, if you have an IT department that desires a higher degree of control over the app, then side-loading is probably the option that you want.

Packaging and Validation

For a side-loaded app, you can use the same process shown earlier for packaging and validating the app with the Windows App Certification Kit. The principle additional requirement for side-loaded apps is that the app must be signed.

This requires a valid certificate, and the Publisher Name in the certificate used to sign the app must match the Publisher Name in the package manifest for the app. Discussing acquisition and deployment of certificates is beyond the scope of this book, but in any large organization, it's likely that you have IT personnel familiar with certificates.

You can use a special certificate provided by Visual Studio to test the application internally. The certificate is generated when your project is created. The file name for the certificate ...