iOS iOS Enterprise Development - TestFlight

[pinyourwings22]

I just received an email this morning that testflightapp.com will no longer be active as of 2/26/2015, and that I should be using the iTunes Connect TestFlight service instead. This is fine and dandy for app store apps, but most of my projects are enterprise apps, and that is not supported in iTunes Connect. On top of that, iTunes Connect TestFlight requires iOS 8, and a good chunk of Enterprise users are still on iOS 7.

Does anyone have a solution outside of TestFlight for deploying Enterprise iOS apps to a set of registered users? I am hoping there is an easier solution than setting up my own MDM, but at this point I think that may be the only option.

 

[lht1999]

There are other solutions similar to TestFlight. I use Crashlytics and it's convenient if you also use it's crash reporting. Every time I archive an build Crashlytics prompts me to distribute the build so I don't need to go to a web page. HockeyApp also works but I don't have much experience with it.

 

[Sean7512]

I just received an email this morning that testflightapp.com will no longer be active as of 2/26/2015, and that I should be using the iTunes Connect TestFlight service instead. This is fine and dandy for app store apps, but most of my projects are enterprise apps, and that is not supported in iTunes Connect. On top of that, iTunes Connect TestFlight requires iOS 8, and a good chunk of Enterprise users are still on iOS 7.

Does anyone have a solution outside of TestFlight for deploying Enterprise iOS apps to a set of registered users? I am hoping there is an easier solution than setting up my own MDM, but at this point I think that may be the only option.

If you are developing enterprise apps, why not just sign them with the enterprise distribution cert and call it a day?

At my work, we have Xcode Server setup to build our apps on commit and sign them with the enterprise cert. On a successful build, the server sends an email to our testers and they can install the app OTA through the web interface. It is extremely easy and works without needing to register UUIDs.

Of course if you want to use a development profile, just configure Xcode Server to build with that profile and it still works all the same. You can do the same thing with Jenkins (not as nice of a solution though) if you don't want to buy/setup OS X Server.

If you are building real enterprise apps, you should be using CI already anyways (the knowledge of how to make a build should not live with a developer...developers leave companies after all )

 

[rtrueman]

Although not an Enterprise user, I do have a significant number of clients on iOS 7. I'm in the middle of a beta process with a bunch of our users through TestFlightApp and I'm not sure what to do either. I don't know what Apple was thinking with limiting the product to iOS 8. I can't imaging I'm going to boot 50% of my beta-testers if they don't upgrade to 8.

Rob

 

[DennisBlah]

Sorry to jump into this topic.

At my work, we have Xcode Server setup to build our apps on commit and sign them with the enterprise cert

Is this as awesome as .. webbased distribution where we need SSL certificates etc ? Also for ad-hoc distribution for inside company only ???

@ pinyourwings
I'm using an webbased 'appstore' for my company as told above.
As you are using registered devices for your apps, it won't be able to install on others anyways.

 

[Sean7512]

Sorry to jump into this topic.


Is this as awesome as .. webbased distribution where we need SSL certificates etc ? Also for ad-hoc distribution for inside company only ???

@ pinyourwings
I'm using an webbased 'appstore' for my company as told above.
As you are using registered devices for your apps, it won't be able to install on others anyways.

The Xcode web server will require a valid SSL certificate to install OTA. If you do not have a SSL cert, then you can install the app directly onto the phone through the Xcode Server integration within Xcode. It works fantastic.

We have separate bots -- 1 that builds a dev version (ad-hoc) on each code commit and 1 that is a manual build that signs with our enterprise certificate (for releases).

If you want to use your own internal web app store, you can add a pre/post build trigger (which is just a bash script) where you can push the .ipa file somewhere or do whatever you need to.

 

[DennisBlah]

The Xcode web server will require a valid SSL certificate to install OTA. If you do not have a SSL cert, then you can install the app directly onto the phone through the Xcode Server integration within Xcode. It works fantastic.

We have separate bots -- 1 that builds a dev version (ad-hoc) on each code commit and 1 that is a manual build that signs with our enterprise certificate (for releases).

If you want to use your own internal web app store, you can add a pre/post build trigger (which is just a bash script) where you can push the .ipa file somewhere or do whatever you need to.

I'm just looking for an local network distribution, wirelessly... But I'm gonna look into an xCode server anyways