Acknowledged
CIQQA-3722

Installing beta apps is almost impossible now

Now that you cannot install apps from the Web site, it is almost impossible to install beta apps. 

There is no developer dashboard in the IQ app, and beta apps do not show up when you select all your own apps. 

As a result, it's always been hard to install beta apps using the IQ app. The way I found to do this was to get the app URL from the Web site, and then open it on my phone. This would open the app in the IQ store to allow installation. But now apps.garmin.com has effectively gone, this route is even harder.

You now access beta apps from the new developer dashboard at apps-developer.garmin.com, but opening a link to an app using this site does not open the app in the IQ app as the IQ app manifest only includes the domains apps.garmin.com apps-test.garmin.com apps.garmin.cn  Therefore, you have to use the old apps.garmin.com URL which is the same as the apps-developer.garmin.com with the alternate domain. Note, that when you do this, there is no marker to indicate it's a beta app.

The best solution here is to have some kind of developer dashboard in the IQ app. Next best would be to have your beta apps show up when you select all apps for yourself. And lastly, apps-developer.garmin.com should be added to the IQ app manifest assetlinks.json so the store can open these new links.

Unless there is a better way I don't know of!

Hope this helps people in the short term. 

gasteropod

  • I'm experiencing this as well. Is it possible this is a bug specific to the Android Connect IQ app? It seems that on the iOS version, the download button for pushing the WF installation is located above the app's title bar in the Developer Dashboard. This button is missing in the Android version

  • > [edit] Maybe you miss the fact that even the old dashboard has been modified so you cannot use it to install apps including beta apps?

    No I understood that.

    > Depending on your phone setup, the web URL does not always and sometimes never redirects you to the IQ store

    Well this is a good point, but it's a general problem with "app links". I agree that for the specific case of installing beta apps, it would be nice to have a dev dashboard in the Connect IQ store phone app. It's funny that Garmin is forcing regular users to use the Connect IQ store phone app by shutting down the website, but they didn't bother to implement crucial CIQ dev functionality in the same app.

    However, providing a dev dashboard in the CIQ phone app wouldn't help with the use case of simply sharing an app with an end user via URL. (I realize that's not what this bug report is about, but it's a somewhat related issue that others have raised.) In that case, we still have to assume that using the URL will successfully open the CIQ phone app.

    (Ofc, in today's internet culture, people barely know what links are, and instead prefer to search for everything. And in fact, even traditional search is being replaced by chatbots. But my point still stands that other than telling people to search for your app name, the only way to share your app is to use a URL.)

    > Some people have to email the link to themselves for it to work as somehow pasting in the browser does not, and some people may not even have the option configured for this to work.

    Continuing my point above about how there are some cases where we *need* the URL to at least optionally open the phone app, this might be something where Garmin could improve that user experience (haha gl).

    I use an iphone, and I noticed in the past that for some pages that can open either in a website or an app (like Strava activities), there are *two ways* to do so once you've successfully opened the page in a phone browser. One is via a prompt/banner that's rendered by the system and another is via a second banner that's rendered by the website itself. As you pointed out, there are cases where the user may not have the correct setup for the system prompt to be shown (e.g. it may not be shown if you use a browser other than the system browser, such as Safari on iOS). I'm fairly sure this is why sites show that second banner.

    As annoying as it might be to see 2 banners asking you to open the current page in an app, it seems to be the accepted way to make sure that users have that option. I did notice that currently, Strava only seems to show the 2nd banner if the system banner isn't shown, so maybe they've improved the UX here. I also noticed that one problem with this 2nd banner is that if it thinks you don't have the latest version of the app (or you don't have the app at all), it will prompt you to update/install the app instead of opening the link in the app. Right now when I open a Strava link in Chrome, the site-provided banner asks me to install the app even though I already have it.

    So clearly a site-provided banner isn't the perfect solution either.

    Nonetheless, I think there's an expectation that app links need to work *somehow*, given that you're using an app in the first place. 

    Btw, at least on iOS, pasting a link into the Notes app is a viable workaround, or sending yourself a message. (I feel like sending yourself an email is the heaviest workaround here, although ofc it's probably the most reliable / universal workaround for this kind of thing.)

    (Funny thing is there's also the converse problem, where sometimes you want a link to open in the browser, but the system insists on opening the associated app. In this case you may have to open the link via the long-press context menu instead of just tapping.)

    Anyway, like I said, it seems like this was another change that was made without really considering the UX or functionality implications. For example, aside from this dev dashboard/beta stuff, it seems like this change will prevent new apps from being searchable via google. Maybe they don't care about google search anymore (see above).

    It's funny that the Google Play store and iOS app store still have robust web presences. I don't think you can install apps *directly* from the store sites, but at least all the apps are still listed and searchable on the web.

  • in reply to flowstate

    While the old URL still works, yes, you can avoid the jiggery pokery of having to edit the URL, but this does not workaround the issue of it being really hard to get to a beta app in the IQ store in order to install it which is the main issue which needs addressing. And given we have been encouraged to move to the new dashboard as the new destination, I would expect the old to go eventually, so a re-direct by Garmin is unlikely to be anything other than a temporary workaround.

    > Another lame workaround would be to edit apps-developer.garmin.com app URLs by hand (replace apps-developer.garmin.com with apps.garmin.com).

    This is what I suggested, although not spelled out so clearly.

    >  I think having this alternate home page redirect to the old dashboard would be a great compromise that would solve this problem

    No, this does not solve the main issue of the difficulty of installing beta apps from the IQ store. Depending on your phone setup, the web URL does not always and sometimes never redirects you to the IQ store. For these users even the workaround does not work.Some people have to email the link to themselves for it it to work as somehow pasting in the browser does not, and some people may not even have the option configured for this to work. This is a kludgy workaround at best which does not work for everyone and is not a solution in any way.

    [edit] Maybe you miss the fact that even the old dashboard has been modified so you cannot use it to install apps including beta apps?

  • I agree that this is super annoying (another example of a change that was made which breaks an important use case and could've conceivably been anticipated and prevented *), but as a workaround, could you just use the old developer dashboard?

    https://apps.garmin.com/developer/dashboard 

    I realize it's not available as a link anymore at https://apps.garmin.com (the old CIQ store home page), but you should be able to use the above link directly.

    Another lame workaround would be to edit apps-developer.garmin.com app URLs by hand (replace apps-developer.garmin.com with apps.garmin.com).

    I agree that one solution would be for app URLs at the new apps-developer.garmin.com domain to open in the Connect IQ store app.

    Note that when you share a URL from the Connect IQ store app, it still shares apps.garmin.com URLs (which makes a certain amount of sense - why would end users need/want to use apps-developer.garmin.com urls)?

    Maybe another solution would be for the new domain (https://apps-developer.garmin.com) to redirect to the old developer dashboard (https://apps.garmin.com/developer/dashboard)? I'm also envisioning that any "new" app URL https://apps-developer.garmin.com/apps/APP_ID would redirect to the equivalent old app URL (https://apps.garmin.com/apps/APP_ID). I mean, clearly, apps.garmin.com is still the domain used in the "canonical" app URL, so it would make sense to use an apps.garmin.com URL in most or all cases.

    I get that since the https://apps.garmin.com home page is now nothing more than an ad for the Connect IQ store apps on iOS and Android, there needs to be an alternate home page for CIQ devs. However, I think having this alternate home page redirect to the old dashboard would be a great compromise that would solve this problem (and the associated problem of having 2 URLs for every CIQ app)

    [*]

    - devs being unable to build for Enduro 2 for a couple months, due to a change in the CIQ device config that was eventually reversed anyway (once it was realized that the intended CIQ change was untenable, even once the corresponding firmware changes were made on Enduro 2 devivces)

    - several existing apps (especially watchfaces) breaking when drawRadialText was removed on purpose from FR165. (Apparently due to the uproar, drawRadialText was eventually restored.)

    - links from the official Connect IQ dev doc blog posts to the forums being broken, due to the ~2017 forum platform transition (all the URLs changed)

    - forum content being lost forever during the ~2017 forum platform transition: images and attachments were lost, and all links were replaced with their link text (the link URL was lost), which was a problem since the forum would abbreviate most URLs-as-links so that the link text was an abbreviated version of the link URL (as it still does today)

    - links from the forum to the official Connect IQ dev docs being broken, due to URLs / site layout changing

    - links from the official Connect IQ dev docs to another page on the same site being broken, due to URLs / site layout changing

    Note that there are some examples of this stuff that are *still* broken (some of which will be broken forever).

    One example (which has been reported months ago, and could easily be fixed) is the fact that the "Devices Reference" link at https://developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/reference-guides/ is *still broken*.