Windows, iOS, and Android, oh my!

This month the roundup focus is on app stores. Whether you’re building apps for the Windows Store, the iOS App Store, or Google Play, these extensions provide build & release tasks to automate many facets of publishing your app. Whether you’re releasing updates to a production app, upgrading from alpha to beta, or managing your rollout, we’ve got you covered here.

Apple App Store

See it in the Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vsclient.app-store

With this extension, you’ll need to do a one time manual publish of your app to the store and follow the instructions to set up a new service endpoint with your App Store Publisher credentials. Once that’s done, configure the two build/release tasks this extension adds and let them do the work!

• App Store Release – This will be your bread and butter task. This supports automating the release of updates to existing iOS TestFlight beta apps or production apps in the App Store. It’s the perfect final step in any CI environment for an iOS developer

• App Store Promote – Do you have an iTunes Connect app you’re looking to promote? The App Store Promote task automates the promotion of a previously submitted app from iTunes Connect to the App Store

Google Play

See it in the Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vsclient.google-play

With this extension, you’ll need to do a one time manual publish of your app and create a service account with permissions to manage your app, this can all be done from the Google Developers Console. Once you complete the service endpoint configuration to give Team Services your publisher credentials, you’re ready to try out the three tasks this extension brings to the table.

• Google Play – Release – This is your bread and butter tasks that automates the release of a new Android app version to the Google Play store

• Google Play – Promote – Got apps on different release tracks? This task automates the promotion of a previously released Android app update from one track to another (e.g. alpha -> beta)

• Google Play – Increase Rollout – If you are leveraging the Google Play rollout track, this task automates increasing the rollout percentage of a previous release app update. Manage how many people receive your app directly from your CI environment!

Windows Store Automation

See it in the Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=davesmits.windows-store-automation

Published by Dave Smits, this extension provides tasks to release or update your Windows Store application from your CI environment, and is similar to the one released by Microsoft. With his extension, Dave has gone the extra mile to support release flighting and automatic version rev’ing with the addition of two new tasks

• Update Appx Version – Add this to your build definition to automate the version increments to your appx
• Publish to Windows Store – This is your bread and butter task that automates publishing or updating your app. It gets really powerful when you combine it with the Team Services release environments, as the task also allows you to target a specific flight (ex. alpha, beta, new_ui_test)

Are you using an extension you think should be featured here?

I’ll be on the lookout for extensions to feature in the future, so if you’d like to see yours (or someone else’s) here, then let me know on Twitter!

@JoeB_in_NC