Why doesn't my enterprise app distribution link work?

Question

I have an Enterprise-signed iOS app that I wish to distribute to my fellow co-workers. I started beta-testing around the end of October, right around when iOS 10 was in beta/released. I set up a page that people could download the app from, and everything was great.

I had to put the app aside for a few months when some other work came up, but now I wish to get back to the app. And, lo and behold, my app link no longer works. No error message, nothing.

Using a proxy, I can see that when I tap the link, it goes and fetches my plist, but doesn't pop up the dialog.

I am running iOS 10.1.1 on an iPhone 6.

This page has a few links, none of which work for me: https://management.senseilabs.com/appdist/

The plist that gets returned looks like this:

<plist>
  <dict>
    <key>items</key>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>assets</key>
        <array>
          <dict>
            <key>kind</key>
            <string>software-package</string>
            <key>url</key>
            <string>https://management.senseilabs.com/appdist/Genome_0.9.0.ipa</string>
          </dict>
          <dict>
            <key>kind</key>
            <string>full-size-image</string>
            <key>url</key>
            <string>https://management.senseilabs.com/appdist/iTunesArtwork@2x.png</string>
            <key>needs-shine</key>
            <true />
          </dict>
          <dict>
            <key>kind</key>
            <string>display-image</string>
            <key>url</key>
            <string>https://management.senseilabs.com/appdist/iTunesArtwork@2x.png</string>
            <key>needs-shine</key>
            <true />
          </dict>
        </array>
      </dict>
    </array>
    <key>metadata</key>
    <dict>
      <key>bundle-identifier</key>
      <string>com.klick.sensei.genome2</string>
      <key>bundle-version</key>
      <string>0.9.0</string>
      <key>kind</key>
      <string>software</string>
      <key>subtitle</key>
      <string>Genome</string>
      <key>title</key>
      <string>Genome</string>
    </dict>
  </dict>
</plist>

EDIT: I tested it on 9.2.1, and it's not working there either. Hm.

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 13 '16 at 18:17

In case some poor soul wanders by, I'll answer this question instead of deleting it, even though it's caused by my own incompetence.

The metadata key in the plist exists in the wrong place. It needs to be beside assets inside the items array. That is, the structure, were it expressed as a plain JSON object, should look like this:

{
    "items": [
        {
            "assets": { ... },
            "metadata": { ... }
        }
    ]
}

I had it like this:

{
    "items": [
        {
            "assets": { ... }
        }
    ],
    "metadata": { ... }
}

(We had it set up correctly, but our plist generator got modified inadvertently, which is why it used to work everywhere, but now works nowhere)

This gist was clutch in figuring out what went wrong: https://gist.github.com/hramos/774468

Why doesn't my enterprise app distribution link work?

1 Answers1