Building and Distributing Your Branded iOS App¶
Building and distributing your branded iOS ownCloud app involves a large number of interdependent steps. The process is detailed in this chapter over several pages. Follow these instructions exactly and in order, and you will have a nice branded iOS app that you can distribute to your users.
Prerequisites¶
- A Mac OS X computer with Xcode (free download) and Keychain Access (included in Utilities)
- An iOS developer account on Developer.Apple.com/ios, which costs $99 per year. Or an Enterprise account for $299/yr. The developer account limits you to testing on 100 devices of each type (Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) which must be registered in your account. The Enterprise account allows testing on unlimited, unregistered devices.
- An ownCloud Enterprise Subscription, with the ownBrander app enabled on Customer.owncloud.com
- Some iPhones or iPads for testing your app. Again, if you have the $99 developer account each device must have its UDID registered in your account on Developer.Apple.com.
Procedure¶
You need the Apple tools to build three provisioning profiles and a P12 certificate, which you will email to branding@owncloud.com after building your app with the ownBrander app on Customer.owncloud.com. It is best to create the provisioning profiles and P12 certificate first, before building your app, because you must supply a unique bundle ID and an app group to build your app. These are created in your account on Developer.Apple.com, and with Keychain Access on your Mac computer.
We use the provisioning profiles and P12 certificate to complete building your app, and then in 24-48 hours your new branded app is loaded into your account on Customer.owncloud.com.
The next step is to test your app on your registered iOS devices. When it passes testing, the final step is to upload it to your iTunes account for distribution.
You will need a lot of graphics for building your app, and for your iTunes store listing, in specific sizes and file formats. The ownBrander app and iTunes detail all the image specifications you will need.