User Management

How you want to manage your app’s users is an important factor in the app design.  

Anonymous users

In the simplest case, your users will download the app from an app store, and use it  They do not need to register or log in.   The users are anonymous, you don’t know much about them.   

The Apple and Google developer consoles will allow you to see how many people have downloaded and installed your app, and other useful information such as which version of Android the are using, which country they are in and so on.  

Registering users

Users can sign up through the app, much as they would through a page in a website.  User management can be implemented through the templedynamic website, allowing you to control user access and communicate with your users. 

If you have an app for a club or society, you might restrict access to some parts of the app to users who you can identify.   You also may wish to have something like a free account and a premium account with additional features.  These 

Pre-configured users 

In an organisation where employees have access to corporate IT systems, it may make sense to to use the same user account on the app. 

These users are pre-configured, there does not need to be a registration mechanism.  User authentication is done by an existing system (for example LDAP or Microsoft Active Directory).

This kind of user management will require user authentication to be integrated between the app and authentication server.  

Cost and technical implications:

Apps using anonymous users have no additional cost implications.  

If you need to manage users in some way, requiring some form of user registration then the cost is likely to increase; medium cost for a system using user authentication through the templedynamic website. 

Integrating existing user authentication has the highest cost - medium to high cost depending on what is required.