Web App Manifest

The manifest is the small file telling the device what your installed app is called, what icon to use, and how to open it.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Configuration:

• Site Settings — the Progressive Web App and Service Workers option groups

Architect Panel → Styling:

• Logo — the logo and colours the app presents

What it declares

• Name and short name — what appears under the icon.
• Start URL — where the app opens, which for a tenant is that tenant’s own address.
• Display mode — standalone, so it opens without browser chrome.
• Theme colour — the surrounding interface colour.
• Icon — the home screen image.

The name, icon and tenant are supplied when the manifest is requested, so a multi-tenant installation gives each customer their own app identity rather than sharing one.

The short name is what people see

Home screen labels are truncated hard — around a dozen characters on most devices. "ActiveManage Field Service Portal" appears as something unrecognisable.

Choose a short name that survives truncation and means something to the user. Test it by installing and looking at the icon.

The icon does the work

It is how somebody finds your app among thirty others. It should be distinctive at small size, legible without text, and different from anything else likely to be on the same screen.

A logo designed for a letterhead usually fails all three. A single letter or a simple mark usually succeeds.

Supply a proper icon file

A square PNG at the expected size, with no transparency where it matters, and no fine detail. An icon scaled down from a wide logo appears as a smear.

Get it right before anybody installs

The most practical warning. The icon and name are captured when a user installs the app; changing the manifest afterwards does not reliably update icons already on home screens.

So the sequence is: set the name, set the icon, install it yourself, look at it, and only then tell anybody else to install it.

The theme colour is small but visible

It colours the area around the app on some platforms. Set it to something from your palette rather than leaving the default, because the default reads as unfinished.

Check the start address

Particularly in a multi-tenant installation, where each tenant’s app should start in their own space. An app opening at the wrong tenant is a confusing failure and an obvious one.

Install it on both platforms

iOS and Android render icons differently — one may round the corners, one may mask it into a shape. An icon that looks right on one can be cropped badly on the other.

Worked example

An organisation set a five-character short name and a simple square mark rather than its full logo, installed it on an iPhone and an Android device, and adjusted the icon after the Android mask cropped the original. Only then were staff asked to install it.

Recommendations

• Short name under a dozen characters.
• A distinctive mark, not a scaled-down logo.
• Install it yourself first — icons do not reliably update afterwards.
• Check both iOS and Android rendering.