Link to Release on install.appcenter.ms

[scottschmitz]

Describe the solution you'd like
I would like to be able to generate links that launch directly to a release on install.appcenter.ms. It appears as though currently you can only generate links to all releases.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently we can link to the list of all releases for an app. You can also by getting the link of the download button send a direct link to an apk. However it would be nice to be able to generate a link that launches to a release where you can view release notes

[joshfriend]

HockeyApp let you do this, and it was amazing. Each version in the dashboard had a "Public page" link which was unique to each version. It would be something like this: https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/<some hex app id>/app_versions/1234

[J-Swift]

This is big for me as well. I really want to have some (minimal) security around the public release link. Even better if the release url was fully randomized so that linking to a single public release does not necessarily let you access all other public releases.

[botatoes]

Thanks for the feature request. We're planning on merging the install portal with the main App Center portal in the upcoming months. Along with that effort, we will support links to specific versions as well as public pages.

[noahsark769]

Just wanted to throw my support behind this too - having a specific page to install a specific build of our internal iOS apps would really be a great help. Ideally we'd like this available as some API (fastlane plugin would be the best but I think we could deal with some sort of other interface as well) so that we can send Slack messages to engineers who have kicked off enterprise builds of our iOS apps with a link to the download page.

The other thing that would be really great about this would be a page where we could see builds for a given app in order of upload, rather than app version. I noticed also that appcenter has a "releases" page that lists all the releases in order of upload, but there's no install button on this page :( seems like if we had a permalink to an install page, we could pretty easily put that link on the "releases" page in order to solve this issue too 👍

Happy to see that this is on the radar!

[karimElJed]

That is great. I just moved from HockeyApp to AppCenter and public pages is the feature I miss the most. Any update on the rough time schedule?

[RyanThomas73]

@botatoes Are there github issue(s) for the portal merge that we can track for status updates and/or provide feedback on?

[botatoes]

@RyanThomas73 I am working on the first round of requirements this week and will create an issue once I have the draft going. I'll post an update here to get your feedback. We will be working with designers on it soon but I'll put out some information around it beforehand.

[SpaceApeGamesSy]

I'll +1 this as well, though our use case is specific to sharing builds around the development team. I seem to be able to share links to specific builds (e.g. https://appcenter.ms/orgs/<your org>/apps/<your app>/distribute/releases/<release number>) but that page doesn't include a download button on mobile 🤦‍♂ .

The desktop page does include a download button, but downloads builds rather than installing them, which is a bit of a mess workflow-wise, specifically on iOS.

[RyanThomas73]

@SpaceApeGamesSy We've had problems specific to iOS as well. One recent problem we ran into was that the 'Download' button doesn't appear on iOS devices when we're visiting the site in Safari. If we install chrome on the iOS device and open the site on the same device the download button was visible.

The latest version of the HockeyApp mobile app is now pulling in the App Center builds for us so we've switched back to using that at the moment in lieu of using the web portal

[botatoes]

Quick update on this. We are finalizing the designs this week (there were some hiccups but we finally did it 😭). I will post links to the flow on this thread next week to get some feedback from you all.

[adibendahan]

+1

This is use case is a must in a development team... Waiting for updates.

[Ant8]

@botatoes any update on this? :)

[TLiu2121999]

+1 This is causing so much inconvenience during cross team testing since we have many versions and releases.. And people have to scroll all the way down to find an earlier version.

[aindran]

Totally need this feature after switching from HockeyApp.. Creates a lot of confusion otherwise...

[SpaceApeGamesSy]

@nrajpurkar Nice to see that the "Updated tester experience" is on the October roadmap, but there are only 43 days remaining to transition to App Center. Are we going to get these features before the transition period ends? None of my teams are happy to migrate to App Center without the ability to link others in the studio directly to the builds they want to share - to the point they're starting to ask whether this is the right solution for us at all.

[cjwirth]

We use HockeyApp for only two things:

1. Distributing feature builds internally and to testers
2. Collecting crash logs

(2) seems to be okay. We preferred the HockeyApp way of seeing a list of releases with the number of crashes listed, and then you can open the release to see crashes specific to versioning. App Center has filtering as well, but getting the same information is not as quick.

However, not being able to efficiently do (1) is a huge dealbreaker for us. We've begun looking into alternatives as well.

I understand that App Center has a lot more things added onto it (e.g. Build, Test, Analytics, Auth, Data, and Push). And that's great! It's just that HockeyApp handled our subset of use cases very well, and App Center so far hasn't provided us with the same experience.

[botatoes]

@SpaceApeGamesSy We have a team that picked up this work today. I understand the frustration for no deep linking and promise to get this delivered ASAP.

@winnieli1 can address the issues and feedback regarding crash logs @cjwirth

[winnie]

@cjwirth thanks for the feedback! We are aware that the design difference between HockeyApp and App Center isn't intuitive for some customers. We don't have immediate plans to change this but we're constantly exploring ways to improve our experience. I'll reach out if there are any updates or mockups I can share.

Thanks!

[smpeleato]

(2) seems to be okay. We preferred the HockeyApp way of seeing a list of releases with the number of crashes listed, and then you can open the release to see crashes specific to versioning. App Center has filtering as well, but getting the same information is not as quick.

@winnieli1 - for what it's worth, I echo this, I've been trying to get used to using AppCenter as the transition date looms but I still find myself going back to the HockeyApp site because it's a lot easier to see the crash breakdown by version.

[shvedoff]

The lack of possibility to generate direct link to a release with a specific build number is blocker for us thus we are not able to make a transition. According to our workflow testers get link to HockeyApp public page of the build to test and then they use QR code there to install the build on a several iOS devices. If they will search for the necessary build on every device in that huge list of releases it would dramatically increase time spent on iteration of test and would add human factor mistakes to an installation process
We are looking forward to see feature that we like so much in AppCenter

[AlexKar]

+1, the lack of this functionality is blocker for migration to AppCenter for us

[avibdev]

@botatoes , I see the "Deep link for release versions" task has been completed in the https://github.com/Microsoft/appcenter/wiki/Roadmap#hockeyapp page. However, I see there is no direct install page per each version available in Appcenter.
Attached is the screenshot

[stianjensen]

Here before stale bot pops in again to just remind you that this feature is heavily awaited! Our team has to consider finding a new way to distribute releases internally now due to the lack of direct links (also there's no link to a list for just one distribution group, which could have been a sort-of band-aid solution).

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[stianjensen]

Still relevant.

[cybvitthal]

Copying the link of Download button under Distribute/Releases, its working for me to get exact APK directly without going to any group page and download.

[joshfriend]

The download button link is only valid for 24h after being generated. You can see it has a query parameter in the URL like se=2022-04-28T14%3A03%3A05Z which is the time at which the link expires.

[xwartz]

Any update?

[cybvitthal]

For now, we created dedicated distribution group and releasing apk to it. Its accessible via public link

[ghost]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[stianjensen]

Still relevant 👌

[cvetomirst]

Still relevant!

[mickey35vn]

Any update?

[evertoncunha]

still relevant

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[stianjensen]

Hi!

[VillSkog]

I give up on this one, Microsoft are ridiculous. Unsuscribing.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[aknabi]

Rather than addressing the problem or resolution status Microsoft's out is to mark it "stale"... Microsoft doesn't really inspire confidence in their ability to manage software development.

[philliptharris]

My team needs this. We need to be able to link our release to a specific build in AppCenter.

[Maksym5732005]

This would be great to have a link to the apk file. Why it is not done for so long?

[ghost]

I'm having an issue where the app center only displays the latest release, upon trying to get the other ones by adding /releases/{release_id} I get the message "not found", meanwhile I know the release existed by checking one of the endpoints on the API, anyone knows what's up with this?