Improve your iOS App Beta Testing with fastlane Tools

So you’ve been working on your latest iOS app and you just closed your last open issue, commit the code, and now you’re ready to start showing your app to beta testers to get some feedback.

If you’ve developed apps for the iPhone in the past you’re familiar with how this process goes…login to the Apple Developer Center, create a new app ID, generate your provisioning profile, login to iTunes Connect to create your app, enter a description, add some keywords, upload screenshots, enter some more information and then you can upload a build to begin the process of using Test Flight to deliver your app to your potential testers.

Image used from the fastlane Github page here — https://github.com/fastlane

All of these steps are time consuming and error prone — and they can be done better. That’s where the fastlane toolset comes into play. fastlane is a collection of open source utilities created by KrauseFx that are designed to automate and improve the app submission process.

We recommend that you spend time to learn about all of the fastlane tools like frameit (put screenshots into devices) and deliver (upload app metadata and screenshots with scripts) but we’re going to focus on the latest addition to the fastlane family — boarding. boarding makes distributing your beta app to Test Flight testers a breeze.

If you’ve worked with Test Flight in the past you are most likely familiar with the app distribution process that goes something like this:

1. Contact your current email list, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, family, friends, and others and ask them if they’d like to try your beta app
2. Provide a link to a Google Form to collect the email addresses of those people that would be willing to test your app using Test Flight
3. Login to iTunes Connect then choose your app and visit the External Testers page
4. Manually type in the email addresses of the folks interested in trying your beta app (or use Apple’s bulk upload)
5. Send the invites to these users via Test Flight
6. Cross your fingers and hope that the people that said ‘yes’ in Step 1 will still say ‘yes’ to trying your app and providing feedback after jumping through all of the hoops in Steps 1 thru 5

Image source http://www.clixmarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/homer-computer-doh.jpg

I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree that if this process was better for our users we would get more beta testers engaged in the app release process.

This is where boarding comes into play. With boarding you can quickly and easily create a web page where beta testers just enter their email address and immediately get invited to Test Flight. We’re currently in the process of beta testing our GIFpitch app and within the last week boarding made our beta onboarding process so much more user friendly.

boarding page created for GIFpitch

KrauseFx provides easy to follow instructions to get boarding up and running. The service relies on heroku to standup a simple web app without tons of configuration. We chose to use the Heroku website option rather than the Terminal option and we were up and running with our new GIFpitch Beta Access page in about 15 minutes. Now, if someone wants access to our beta they just enter some information into our form and they get the Test Flight invite right away.

We’re excited to see how the project grows and we plan on contributing in the future — that’s the beauty of open source!

If you are in the process of beta testing your iOS app we highly recommend you take a look at boarding today. Then when you have some more time explore the rest of the fastlane tools — you’ll be happy you did.

716 Labs is an indie app development studio run by Karl and Scott. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to discuss this article, any of our apps, or anything regarding iOS app development.