Enterprise provisioning profile expiry - renewing early

Hello all,


The company I work for has an enterprise app developer program subscription, which is due to expire on 8th Oct 2015. Consequently our enterprise distribution profiles for our apps are valid until 8th Oct also. We've just renewed it now, about 3 weeks early, in order to prepare and re-distribute the in-house apps they have with a new provisioning profile valid through to Oct 8th 2016.


However - I noticed that if I go in and generate the new in-house distribution profile *now*, it isn't valid through to 8th Oct 2016 - but exactly one year from today (14 Sep 2016). This strikes me as a bit strange, as if I redistribute the app now, we're going to have to create another profile, rebuild and re-distribute the apps again at some point to make it valid through to the 8th Oct 2016. Either that, or we will have to renew the program even earlier next year and have a very narrow window for updating the apps.


Is there something I'm missing here? Why doesn't it make the provisioning profile valid through until when the program membership expires - even if it is over a year away?


Would like to hear others handle this. This is the first time our program has come up for renewal, so haven't been through this before.


Cheers,

Corey.

Replies

If I remember correctly, the expiration dates of distrubution profiles and provisioning profiles aren't directly tied to the renwal date of the Enterprise account itself.


Instead, the provisining profiles are valid one year from the date you generated them. That means that you proactevly generate new ones every six months to make sure you apps are always valid for at least 6 months when downloaded, rather than just a couple of weeks are you had before doing the things above.


The exipiration date of the distrubtion and provisining profiles aren't the only thing checked though. So the apps ought to stop working if you don't renew the Enterpirse account in time, even if the provisining profile hasn't expired yet.

Hi,


Thanks for the info. That makes sense now, and aligns with what I've since observed. I tried to test things out by manually for an enterprise app by setting the date past the provisioning profile expiry date on my iPad, but the app kept working - I guess it takes into account when the program expires and possibly doesn't contact Apple's servers every time you run the app.


Thanks.


Cheers,

Corey.

@Yooba-Christoffer, on the app store, apps that have been previously downloaded continue to work even if the developer lets their membership expire. I would expect the same to be true of enterprise apps. I am not aware of any server authentication that takes place for an app to launch. After all, you can launch apps when your device is in airplane mode and does not have any network connection at all.


Where you'd get into trouble is with things like push notifications, iCloud, or other servcies that do rely on Apple server support. (And, obviously, your apps will stop working if the certificate or the provisioning profile expires.)


The idea of regenrating the provisioning profile and pushing out a new build to all your users every 6 months makes good sense. In addition to giving you at least 6 months of lifespan for every new in-house install, it also means that you have 6 months to get your users to upgrade before they're blocked. It avoids the nightmare scenario where all your users' apps stop working on the same day.

Sorry to **** in on an old thread, but do I take correctly from your reply that renewing provisioning also requires action on each device? Where end users need to perform tasks other than to re-download the app?

If the process is where the user downloads, that scenario includes the installation of a fresh profile. In your example, a download is an install is a download is an install. Done and done.


If you have further questions, pls. create your own unique thread (referencing this one as you see fit) so that you can better track, close if solved, etc., thanks and good luck.