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Srikanth Rajagopalan, PM Director and Workplace aficionado

Recently at Google I/O, we announced a comprehensive set of new features that will allow IT organizations to easily deploy and manage Android devices in enterprise environments. These features will be built into the upcoming Android L release.

Samsung, with its KNOX technology, has been a thought leader in the enterprise mobility space. In order to accelerate Android adoption in the enterprise, we have partnered with Samsung to bring key KNOX functionality into Android, for the benefit of the entire Android ecosystem. We thank Samsung for their contributions. These new capabilities will make it easy for IT organizations to allow employees to bring their own Android devices to work (BYOD) and use them on the corporate network or to simply issue new Android devices to their employees. IT administrators will be able to manage a wide range of Android devices from many manufacturers, using third-party Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solutions that are built on top of the new enterprise APIs launching with Android L release.

Google and Samsung together designed the new enterprise APIs around three major concepts:

• Device and data security
• Support for IT policies and restrictions
• Mobile application management

Device and data security

At the core of the expanded enterprise capabilities being introduced in Android 'L' lies a set of technologies that are designed to keep personal and corporate data both separate and safe. We achieve the data separation by building on the existing multi-user support in Android: personal and corporate applications will run as two separate Android users. Data is kept safe by using block-level disk encryption as well as verified boot technology. For those of you familiar with KNOX, this is analogous to KNOX Workspace. EMMs will be able to take advantage of new Android SDK APIs to enable the creation of a managed profile, which is where all corporate applications and data will reside.

Support for IT restrictions and policies

EMMs can use new Android SDK APIs , which have evolved from KNOX APIs, to allow IT admins to enforce a wide set of policies, ranging from system settings and certificate provisioning to application-specific (e.g. Chrome) configurations and restrictions.

Mobile application management

EMMs will be able to use new backend APIs, adapted from KNOX APIs and built around strong security principles for on-device app deployment, to allow IT admins to curate the corporate application catalog and to remotely deploy applications to the managed profile on the employees' devices.

We encourage developers interested in the new Enterprise APIs to download and test the Android L Developer Preview. For developers who have already built applications using Samsung KNOX APIs, Samsung will be providing a KNOX Compatibility Library that will let such applications run on all Android L devices.

You can read more about this collaboration on the Samsung KNOX blog. Stay tuned for additional details.

21 Jul 2014 4:16pm GMT

Today's post on #AndroidWear is from +Wayne Piekarski.

Now that the full Android Wear SDK is available, it's time to port your existing wearable-enabled notification code from the Developer Preview. In the process, you'll switch to using the latest Android support library, and there are some small API changes that will require you to update your code. This article will show you how to update my previous code samples that were released earlier for stacks and pages, which you can use to guide the conversion of your own code as well.

To get started with an existing project in Android Studio, you should update to the 0.8 or later release. You also need to make sure you've downloaded the Google Support Library version 20 or later from the SDK Manager. Since this is only a notification-based example, there's no need to download the full Android Wear SDK, which is only needed if you want to create an APK to run on the wearable device.

Unix diff output is used to show the necessary changes in an easy to understand way. Do not copy the + or - symbols at the start of each line, and ignore the lines starting with @@ which are used to indicate the line number that changed. For the curious, I used the following command to generate the diff output from the last commit in my GIT repository (the -U1 shows one line of context to keep the output simple):

git show HEAD -U1

Gradle changes

To add the new support-v4 library, you need to edit your build.gradle file like so:

@@ -24,2 +24,3 @@ dependencies {
     compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:19.+'
+    compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:20.0+'
 }

Make sure you remove the wearable-preview-support.jar that was provided with the Developer Preview from your libs directory and build.gradle file, since these features are now in the standard support library.

Package imports

Since the APIs and package names have changed, the import statements at the top of MainActivity.java need to be adjusted like this:

@@ -7,3 +7,2 @@ import android.view.MenuItem;
-import android.support.v4.app.NotificationCompat;
 import android.app.Notification;
@@ -13,4 +12,9 @@ import android.graphics.Bitmap;
 import android.graphics.BitmapFactory;
-import android.preview.support.v4.app.NotificationManagerCompat;
-import android.preview.support.wearable.notifications.WearableNotifications;
+import android.support.v4.app.NotificationCompat;
+import android.support.v4.app.NotificationManagerCompat;
+
+// Extra dependencies needed for the pages example
+import java.util.ArrayList;
+import java.util.List;
+import android.support.v4.app.NotificationCompat.BigTextStyle;

Stacking notifications

Since the preview SDK, we have simplified how notifications are implemented. The existing NotificationCompat.Builder() was extended to support groups directly, instead of a separate WearableNotifications class. The steps are a lot simpler, as can be seen with the following changes to showStackNotifications():

@@ -63,3 +67,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
         // Group notification that will be visible on the phone
-    NotificationCompat.Builder builderG = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
+    Notification summaryNotification = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
             .setContentTitle("2 Pet Notifications")
@@ -67,5 +71,5 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher)
-                .setLargeIcon(bitmapMila);
-    Notification summaryNotification = new WearableNotifications.Builder(builderG)
-            .setGroup(GROUP_KEY_MESSAGES, WearableNotifications.GROUP_ORDER_SUMMARY)
+                .setLargeIcon(bitmapMila)
+            .setGroup(GROUP_KEY_MESSAGES)
+            .setGroupSummary(true)
             .build();
@@ -76,3 +80,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             PendingIntent.getActivity(this, notificationId+1, viewIntent1, 0);
-    NotificationCompat.Builder builder1 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
+    Notification notification1 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
             .addAction(R.drawable.ic_action_done, "Treat Fed", viewPendingIntent1)
@@ -81,4 +85,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
                     + "Can we have steak?")
-                .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher);
-    Notification notification1 = new WearableNotifications.Builder(builder1)
+            .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher)
             .setGroup(GROUP_KEY_MESSAGES)
@@ -89,3 +92,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             PendingIntent.getActivity(this, notificationId+2, viewIntent2, 0);
-    NotificationCompat.Builder builder2 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
+    Notification notification2 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
             .addAction(R.drawable.ic_action_done, "Water Filled", viewPendingIntent2)
@@ -93,4 +96,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             .setContentText("Can you refill our water bowl?")
-            .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher);
-        Notification notification2 = new WearableNotifications.Builder(builder2)
+            .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher)
             .setGroup(GROUP_KEY_MESSAGES)

Page notifications

Page notifications have also changed to use a WearableExtender() class instead of the WearableNotifications class, as can be seen here in showPageNotifications():

@@ -151,3 +153,3 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             PendingIntent.getActivity(this, notificationId+1, viewIntent1, 0);
-    NotificationCompat.Builder builder1 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
+    Notification notification1 = new NotificationCompat.Builder(this)
             .addAction(R.drawable.ic_action_done, "Returned", viewPendingIntent1)
@@ -155,5 +157,4 @@ public class MainActivity extends ActionBarActivity {
             .setContentText("You have " + numOverdue + " books due at the library")
-            .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher);
-    Notification notification1 = new WearableNotifications.Builder(builder1)
-            .addPages(extras)
+                .setSmallIcon(R.drawable.ic_launcher)
+            .extend(new NotificationCompat.WearableExtender().addPages(extras))
             .build();

Conclusion

If you want to download the final source code of showStackNotifications() and showPageNotifications(), you can download the MainActivity.java file. You can build this file easily by creating a new project in Android Studio, adding the support library, and then copying in this MainActivity.java.

As you can see, porting this previous code over to the latest Android Wear SDK is really easy! It should take you hardly any time at all to get your experimental applications ported over and ready for publishing on the Google Play!

17 Jul 2014 11:08pm GMT

By Reto Meier, Head of Scalable Developer Advocacy

Today I'm proud to announce the latest resource for learning to develop Android apps: Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals.

Android Fundamentals is an online training course featuring Google Developer Advocates Reto Meier, Dan Galpin, and Katherine Kuan, working with the team at Udacity that's advanced and technical enough for experienced developers who are new to Android - maybe even new to mobile - but not new to programming.

The course offers step-by-step training in which you'll build an Android app, and learn best practices of mobile development in general and Android development in particular.

The full course materials - all the videos, quizzes, and forums - are available for free for all students by selecting "View Courseware". Personalized ongoing feedback and guidance from Coaches is also available to anyone who chooses to enroll in Udacity's guided program.

This guided course, along with UX Design for Mobile Developers and Mobile Web Development, complement our existing material-including documentation, samples, and videos - to offer a solid grounding in developing great experiences for people using mobile devices. Check out the trailer below for an overview of what's in the course.

Mobile devices are the platform that will bring the next five billion people online. With Android expanding rapidly into emerging markets, and growing beyond phones and tablets into wearables, auto, and TV, learning the fundamentals behind Android development represents an opportunity to affect and improve the lives of billions of people.

We look forward to seeing what the next wave of Android developers build, and we'll keep exploring new ways to help you become better developers.

15 Jul 2014 6:39pm GMT