HttpVPN Developer's Guide: Publishing Web App Release

Overview

This document explains final steps of the process that makes an existing web app installation package available for ordering at the HttpVPN Portal Web App Store.

The content of this guide assumes that reader is familiar with the following topics:
- Developer's Guide: The Overview.
- Developer's Guide: Creating Your Web App Store.
- Developer's Guide: Creating Application's Release Definition and managing product lines.
- Developer's Guide: Creating an Installer, and Creating an installer in Microsoft Visual Studio.

Preparing a Release Definition for Publishing at The Web App Store

Once you have created an installation package that installs HttpVPN Proxy, your app, and kicks off application registration process at the end of the installation, you should make your application installation package available for HTTP or FTP downloading or FTP downloading. (In the future UltiDev LLC is likely to offer an inexpensive or free hosting services for redistributable HttpVPN-enabled web apps.)

Having made your app installer available for downloading, you need to update your app release properties at the portal to tell HttpVPN where to download the installer from. To do that please navigate to the App Store Management page, then select an appropriate product line and target platform:

...and then click Properties link to bring up settings of the release for which you have created installation package:
Specifying release download URL
Enter the URL that will be used to download your app installation package and click Update button to save changes. Now your app is ready for end-to-end testing of the ordering process, package downloading and finally application installation & registration with HttpVPN.

We highly recommend to always create a new release record and provide unique download URLs for every new version of your app. The reason is the easy rollback process: if you published release 1.1 after 1.0 and found that 1.1 has a critical problem and needs to be taken offline, HttpVPN app store release management makes it possible in just one mouse click of the Discontinue button. Once version 1.1 of your app is offline, previous one, 1.0, is back online automatically.

However, until the release is published, it is completely fine to replace previous installation package with a newer one.

Testing Ordering of the App Release

Please note that it's not necessary to publish your app just to test ordering process.
Use "Create Test Order" link instead - it creates a test order record for unpublished releases:

Clicking "Create Test Order" link will take you to the Web App Ordering page similar to what users see when they decide to order a published app at the HttpVPN Portal Web App Store:
Creating a test order
Click "Create Test Order" button to simulate purchasing of your brand new unreleased software title. You will see the message just like what customers see when they have finished checkout process of the new app. Click Continue button, and you will be taken to the Portal home page, where you will see the test order record allowing you to download and install your app:
Test order created

At this point you should follow the End-User's Guide to test downloading, installation and registering your app with HttpVPN service.

After you have completed testing release ordering process, it's time to make the app available to the world.

Publishing The Release to Enable App Ordering and Downloading by General Public

If you plan to change release settings (like from beta to final release), change the price or specify trial period, please skip to the next chapter to find out how to do it. Although it's possible to change release price after it was published (even if it was free), the best practice would be to keep the price unchanged after publishing the release.

After you have tested the installation process for all target platforms you claim to support, you may navigate to the App Release Management Page and click Publish button at your app release record to make it available to general public for ordering, downloading and installation.

Once the app release was published, it becomes available for ordering at the HttpVPN Portal App Store:
App release published

If you need to "un-publish" an app release to stop the app being available for ordering by end users, navigate to the App Release Management Page and hit Discontinue button:
Release published
It will be possible to publish the release again a little bit later, but the release date will remain as of the very first time the release was published.

When a product line/target platform pair has multiple published releases, old releases don't need to be discontinued in order for new ones to become active. Only the latest published release for each target platform will be made available for ordering by end users. Also, when multiple releases exist, discontinuing the latest release automatically makes previous one available for ordering (if it was not discontinued).

For example, if you publish release 1.0, and then some time later publish release 1.1 without discontinuing 1.0, only release 1.1 will be available for ordering by end users. But as soon as you discontinue release 1.1, release 1.0 becomes available for ordering and downloading again.

Specifying App Release Price and Trial Period

Chances are you as a software vendor want not only to distribute your web-based software, but also make money too. UltiDev team works hard on implementing payment collection and revenue reporting features. Once that is done, this chapter will be expanded to explain how to specify price and trial period properties of an app release.

At this point, because HttpVPN has only recently been made available for general public for testing, payment collection functionality is temporarily disabled,
and only free releases may be published right now.

App vendors will be required to have PayPal account in order
to collect revenue generated by their app sales.

When payment collection functionality is turned on, HttpVPN App Store will offer end users standard 30 day money back guarantee for all non-free apps that have no trial period, so users will be required to pay at the check-out time:
Shopping cart not trial period
...but the purchase will be fully refundable if they return the app within the money-back guarantee period. (Once end user returned the app, it stops being accessible for the end users at the HttpVPN Portal.)

If your app has free trial period, then end users will be offered two options at the check out. One is to pay right now and get extended money back period equal to standard 30 days plus the duration of trial period. The other is to pay nothing upfront and get only trial period, with no money back guarantee.

For example, if the app you sell has free trial period of 10 day, end users will see these options in their shopping cart:
Shopping car with trial period

Once payment collection and revenue reporting functionality of the HttpVPN Portal is turned on in the near future, app vendors will be able to collect revenue for apps that were purchased and not returned within money-back guarantee period.

Please be sure to refer your customers to our end-user's guide for installation directions.

See Also

[Applications' compatibility, performance and security: what to expect]
[End-user's guide]