I work in an organization which have an Apple enterprise provisioning profile.
We are developing an iOS application that makes use of Apple Push Notifications, and would like to use TestFlight to distribute it to many users in the organizations without having to register their device ids in TestFlight.
Can we use an enterprise wildcard provisioning profile to distribute via TestFlight an application that uses Apple Push Notifications?
Or can we use an explicit provisioning profile to distribute the app via TestFlight without having to register those employees devices in TestFlight beforehand?
Thanks in advance,
Ido
It should work!
What about Enterprise Apps?
If you are registered with Apple's Enterprise Program and are making Enterprise Apps, no worries...TestFlight works with those too. TestFlight fully supports Enterprise Apps and it works much like Ad Hoc apps for distribution. Just upload an Enterprise signed app and distribute to your team and only approved members of your team will have access to the application for installation.
Source: http://help.testflightapp.com/customer/portal/articles/402851-testflight-faq
If you have an Enterprise Distribution profile, there is no need to use testflight any more. You can just put it anywhere on the internet and let users download it.
Registering devices is needed only for development profiles. There are no distribution wildcard profiles.
Related
Im curious to know whether apple developer account ($99/ year) facilitates to create adhoc provisioning profiles.
The scenario behind is that, i want to distribute my app among testers before submitting to the App Store.
Thanks in advance.
Yes. https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/distribute.html
Ad Hoc Distribution
With Ad Hoc distribution, you can share your app
with up to 100 iOS devices via email or your server.
I have a customer who is using an app on their iPads that was developed by a third party who is no longer around. The app is not in the AppStore. They were explaining to me how once a year they need to login to TestFlight.com to reset something. I looked at Testflight at as far as I can tell, its a testing platform, not for production use. I assume they are renewing the dev certificates or something similar.
Does this make sense? Is this a legal way of running a native app on an iOS device?
What are the benefits of services like TestFlight?
Your Enterprise Certificate
Enterprise apps must be re-provisioned once a year. You will need to login to the Apple Dev Center, refresh your Provisioning Profile, resign the app, and re-upload to TestFlight.
TestFlight And HockeyApp
In addition to Testflight there is also HockeyApp.net. These are services that allow you to manage an app either during test using Ad Hoc certificates from Apple or acting as a managed AppStore when developing Enterprise apps.
It also has a number of great features, including, crash report collection, managing of testers and their feedback, update notifications on the client, test device UDID management, and verifying that the tester has actually installed the correct version.
All these things are incredibly useful to someone that has to deal with these sorts of things professionally.
Enterprise vs. Ad Hoc
Enterprise certificates from Apple allow you many of the same privileges as the AppStore. This arrangement requires you to be a business with a DUNS number and you must sign a contract with Apple that states you will use this exclusively in adherence to their terms. This costs about $299/year and the app is good for one year once correctly signed. You can install it on any iOS device in accordance with the contract you signed with Apple.
Ad Hoc is what is used for in-house testing. Each device UDID has to be added to the Apple Developer Portal, attached to the provisioning profile, downloaded, and resign the app with the new provisioning profile. Cost is $99/year, maximum of 100 devices, and devices can only be removed once a year. Each app expires after a few months.
Test Flight is an apk/ipa (app binary) distribution mechanism. So they may be accepting testflight's profile on their phones if their UDID was registered to receive drops of a particular app.
TestFlight can be used for distributing apps signed with Enterprise Certificates, i.e. apps that can't be distributed through AppStore.
Another possibility is that the app is run on only a few devices, registered as test devices on a regular Developer Account. If that's the case, the limit of numbers of devices should be noticed: 100 devices.
I have an Apple Enterprise account and have created an enterprise build and am assessing whether to host the build myself on a web server or use Testflight.
I'm currently playing around with Testflight and have uploaded a build and am trying to install into onto devices.
It seems it will not let me install a build onto a device unless that device has been registered with the Apple provisioning portal and the device's UUID included into the provisioning profile.
But isn't this contrary to the point of enterprise builds, where its not necessary for the apps to be registered with the portal?
And it makes it useless for Enterprise apps because even with my enterprise account the portal still says there is a limit of 100 devices that can be registered.
Therefore I must not putting all the pieces together conceptually. I don't understand what's the point of using Testflight for Enterprise apps if the app udid must be registered with the portal?
You need to make sure you're code signing the application with a Distribution provisioning profile, and have your Distribution certificate installed in your keychain.
It sounds like you're accidentally code signing with a standard Development profile/certificate, which is why your app will only run on that profile's listed devices.
I'm development a app for iPad that will be used within the company only.
As the devices that will use the app will be more than 100, the company need to join iOS enterprise program.
How works the distribution for In-house distribution?
I need to register all the devices to generate one Certificate for the app? Or I can generate one Certificate and the app will work on every devices?
Apple need to approve the application for In-house distribution?
The company's objective for distribution will be deploy the application on their website so the employees can access the web site, login, and download the app for theirs devices. There is any roles from apple that does not approve this method? What is the best method for distribution In-house app?
Answers to your questions:
1)You don't need to register devices on provisioning portal for
"in-house" distribution. Apps built with these profiles can be
installed on any iOS device.
2)Enterprise apps don't undergo Apples's review process as they are
not meant to be distributed through the app-store. In fact Apple
doesn't have any role in enterprise app distribution cycle.
3)You can distribute app through any medium you want, within your
enterprise, OTA, Intranet or mail(I have seen distribution through all
these mediums in my enterprise).
However the license agreement says that you can't distribute enterprise apps to anyone outside your enterprise, not even your clients. You can demo the app to people who don't belong to you enterprise, but they should only be installed on devices owned by the enterprise or employees of the enterprise.
I am facing some issues related with iOS Developer program and iOS Enterprise Program. One of my client ask me to suggest one of them. Please answer my questions related to iOS Enterprise Program-
If i purchase an iOS Enterprise account so when it is available for in-house application distribution?
How many device i have on which i can install my app?
Do i need UDID of all devices?
What if i want to add some new devices?
If it is same Ad-hoc distribution the what is the expiry date of Ad-hoc certificate?
Thanks
As soon as you sign the contracts and make the purchase and Apple verifies all the information, you can create your distribution certificate, provisioning profile and then sign your app with the certificate, and distribute your app with the profile.
There is no limit to the number of devices.
No, you do not need to get the UDID's of the devices for Enterprise distribution.
Just send the app and the distribution provisioning profile to the user who has the new device.
The certificate is used to sign the app - to my knowledge there is not an "ad-hoc" vs. "distribution" certificate.
Hy Rayfleck,
I'm not sure about that..
Reading this post: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Has-anyone-had-experience-iOS-72283.S.52864455
made me realize that:
Enterprise license can do 2 different kind of release:
release for internal distribution
release for a third party distribution
The internal distribution has no limit of devices
The third party distribution is limited to only 100 devices..