Enterprise Pathway

Get started with this easy-to-navigate collection of videos, documentation, and tools to build great apps.

    Explore the enterprise blueprint

    If you’re new to building apps for organizations, start with Apple’s Enterprise Blueprint for App Design and Development, which provides an overview of how to design enterprise mobile solutions.

    Build using Apple frameworks

    Enterprise app developers can plan for long-term use, ease of maintenance, and improvement by iteration by limiting third-party dependencies and relying on Apple’s supported tools and frameworks.

    Apple frameworks give the greatest return on investment for business-critical app development, providing the most robust, future-proof, and lowest-risk options.

    Review the basics of Swift

    Apple frameworks work best and most reliably with the Swift language.

    Discover UI frameworks

    Whether you’re building a new application or updating an existing one, you’ll want to build your interfaces with SwiftUI — the latest and most flexible UI framework that works across all Apple devices.

    Model and persist your data

    One central paradigm you’ll want to learn is how to reliably update, persist, and sync your data. SwiftData works seamlessly with modern Swift applications, but you can also incorporate other frameworks such as Core Data or CloudKit.

    Design for effective and productive work

    While designing your app, keep Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) close at hand. The HIG offers invaluable information on how to design your app’s interface, navigate content, and manage interactions. We also encourage you to explore the relevant sections of the Apple Design Resources.

    Learn how to build enterprise apps that work together seamlessly.

    Unlock the power of context

    One of the biggest advantages that modern apps have over legacy solutions is their ability to save time and effort by providing context. Context is what the device can tell you about its location, movement speed, and available networks. It’s the ability of the device to take pictures, scan codes, see nearby beacons, or interact with NFC chips.

    Field service technicians or insurance agents can take a picture and get automatically embedded date/time and location information, instead of typing in a long description of what’s broken or damaged. Factory managers can be quickly prompted with the relevant safety procedures when the weather turns dangerous.

    Using contextual information in a smart way preserves battery life, simplifies workflows, and improves the accuracy of your metrics and data.

    Build robust apps

    Swift Testing

    Once your app is part of someone’s job, you should protect that work (and your relationship with your users) by using consistent and thorough testing to prevent regressions or unexpected behavior. Here are some resources for using Swift Testing to create unit tests.

    Instruments

    “How quickly can I build a prototype?” is often an important discussion point for developers when choosing a platform, a set of tools, or a development framework. But over time, an even more important question is, “how quickly can I find and fix bugs and performance bottlenecks?”

    There are no two features more valuable to an app than “fast and reliable.” Familiarizing yourself with Xcode’s performance and debugging tools will pay huge dividends when you develop for Apple platforms.

    Use Instruments to assess performance and debug apps

    Accessibility

    When you’re designing your app, consider the range of users and environments you’re designing for. When you use native frameworks, you can easily support localization, Dynamic Type, multitasking with different size classes, and many other accessibility features.

    Localization

    Localize apps to support a global audience

    Integrate with enterprise APIs

    Once you’re able to build a basic app that connects to your organization’s data and resources, you can focus on the specific frameworks that are most applicable to the solutions you’re building.

    Automate your CI/CD pipeline

    Distribute enterprise apps

    Developers typically distribute their apps to their users via:

    • The App Store — the default distribution mechanism for every Apple device
    • Custom apps — using the App Store infrastructure; only available to specified organizational customers
    • Unlisted apps — using the App Store infrastructure; apps are distributed via URL and aren’t publicly searchable
    • In-house apps — signed with a certificate from the Apple Developer Enterprise Program; distributed directly to employees only, usually via MDM

    Choosing the right distribution mechanism for your app is important. Keep in mind who you’re developing for, how the distribution will be managed, and whether you’ll take advantage of the App Store infrastructure (e.g., access to TestFlight, not having to manage signing certificates and provisioning profiles, etc.). The first three options can all be done through the Apple Developer Program, while the in-house option requires a separate enrollment in the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, which comes with some additional requirements.

    App distribution resources

    Go further