Distributing iOS Application to Private Distribution Group using Microsoft Visual Studio App Center

Distributing iOS Application to Private Distribution Group

Question

You have a private distribution group that contains provisioned and unprovisioned devices.

You need to distribute a new iOS application to the distribution group by using Microsoft Visual Studio App Center.

What should you do?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

B

When releasing an iOS app signed with an ad-hoc or development provisioning profile, you must obtain tester's device IDs (UDIDs), and add them to the provisioning profile before compiling a release. When you enable the distribution group's Automatically manage devices setting, App Center automates the before mentioned operations and removes the constraint for you to perform any manual tasks. As part of automating the workflow, you must provide the user name and password for your Apple ID and your production certificate in a .p12 format.

App Center starts the automated tasks when you distribute a new release or one of your testers registers a new device. First, all devices from the target distribution group will be registered, using your Apple ID, in your developer portal and all provisioning profiles used in the app will be generated with both new and existing device ID. Afterward, the newly generated provisioning profiles are downloaded to App Center servers.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/appcenter/distribution/groups

To distribute a new iOS application to a private distribution group that contains provisioned and unprovisioned devices using Microsoft Visual Studio App Center, you should follow these steps:

  1. Register the devices on the Apple Developer portal: In order to distribute iOS applications, you need to have the devices registered on the Apple Developer portal. This involves obtaining the device UDIDs and registering them with Apple. This step is necessary to ensure that only registered devices can install the app.

  2. Create an active subscription in App Center Test: You need to create an active subscription in App Center Test to be able to distribute your app. App Center Test is a feature of Visual Studio App Center that allows you to distribute your app to a group of testers. You can create a new subscription or use an existing one.

  3. Upload the iOS application to App Center: Once you have registered the devices and created an active subscription in App Center Test, you need to upload the iOS application to App Center. You can do this by creating a new app and selecting the iOS platform.

  4. Add the devices to the distribution group: You need to add the registered devices to the distribution group in App Center Test. This can be done by selecting the group and adding the device IDs.

  5. Distribute the app: Finally, you can distribute the app to the distribution group by selecting the group and clicking on the "Distribute" button. The app will be available for installation on the registered devices.

Note that requesting the Apple ID associated with the user of each device is not necessary for distributing the app using App Center Test. The user does not need to provide their Apple ID, as the distribution is handled through App Center Test. Similarly, adding the device owner to the organization in App Center is also not necessary for distributing the app.