University Development Resources

If you’re doing app development on behalf of the university with the goal to publish your app under UChicago’s presence in the App Store or Google Play Store, you can use University app development resources.

What we offer:

  • Enterprise Distribution. If you have an iOS/Android app that you would like to distribute internal to The University of Chicago then this is what you want. We can host a build of your application and make it available on ios-enterprise.uchicago.edu, which will require cnet authentication to install the app.
  • Beta Distribution. When you have tested your application and are ready to distribute it to external testers we can help with that too. We will work with your sign your application for distribution and set up TestFlight and Google Play (Alpha/Beta) for iOS and Android respectively.
  • Publishing on the App Store / Google Play Store. If you are ready to release your application to the general public under UChicago’s presence on the App Store of Google Play Store we will work with you to sign your application for distribution, navigate the review process, and finally, make your app available under UChicago’s account.

For security reasons we maintain strict control over UChicago’s App Store and Google Play accounts. When distributing an iOS or Mac app on the App Store or using our Enterprise Distribution services this security restriction means that we will need access to your code base. When distributing an Android app via Enterprise Distribution or on the Google Play store we leave the signing up to you, but we will handle the rest.

Enterprise Distribution

  • See ‘Sign Your App for Distribution’
  • Once we have your signed application we can create an entry for it on ios-enterprise.uchicago.edu. At that point you can invite people with cnet credentials to go to ios-enterprise.uchicago.edu, login, and download your application.

Beta Distribution

  • In order to use TestFlight on iOS or alpha/beta builds on Google Play you will need to sign your application in the same way that you would for final distribution. See ‘Sign your App for Distribution’.

iOS (TestFlight)

  • On iOS beta testers are managed in iTunes Connect by invitation through email. When you have a comprehensive list of everyone that you would like to have access to a beta build of your application put their email addresses in a comma separated text file so the we can bulk add them as External Testers.
  • Once your testers have been added and the beta build has been posted we can invite your testers to test through iTunes Connect.

Android (Alpha/Beta Builds)

  • Once you have signed your application, send us the signed APK file and we will upload it to the Google Play Developer console as either an Alpha or Beta build.
  • You can manage testers using either a google group (groups.google.com) or a Google + group, where membership grants access to the beta build. Let us know the name of the group and we can add that group as a test group in the Developer console.

Publishing to iTunes or Google Play

  • See ‘Sign Your App for Distribution’.
  • If we have worked with you to distribute a beta build through TestFlight or Google Play we can publish the final build at your discretion with no additional work.

Sign Your App for Distribution

iOS (App Store)

  • In order to sign your application for distribution under the UChicago account on the App Store we will need access to your Xcode project.
  • Usually this works best if you grant read-only access to your repository, but a simple zip archive of the project will do just fine.
  • We will sign the application using UChicago’s App Store/Enterprise distribution certificate and proceed with the desired distribution process.
  • If you are not comfortable handing over parts of your code base, we are happy to meet in person to work with you on signing your application.

Android (Google Play)

  • You should sign your application like you would for any other Google Play distribution by following the Signing in Release Mode instructions at http://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/app-signing.html
  • Once you have generated the signed APK for your application send it on over and we will proceed with the distribution process.