Azure App Center Features and Functionality

Azure App Center is a powerful tool that helps you build, test, and distribute mobile apps with ease. It's a one-stop-shop for all your app's needs, from development to deployment.

With Azure App Center, you can automate tasks such as testing, analytics, and distribution, freeing up time to focus on what matters most - creating a great user experience.

One of the key features of Azure App Center is its ability to handle push notifications, allowing you to send targeted messages to your users. This helps increase engagement and retention, which is crucial for any successful app.

Azure App Center also provides detailed analytics, giving you insights into how users interact with your app. This information can be used to make data-driven decisions and improve your app's overall performance.

To set up and distribute builds in Azure App Center, you need to create a signed build. Only signed builds can be deployed and installed to devices, so ensure your existing Azure DevOps build definition produces a signed build.

To distribute the signed build, you'll need to add the App Center Distribute task to your build definition. This task uploads your signed build to App Center, allowing you to distribute it to your beta testers. You'll need App Center Distribute Task version 3 or newer to use this feature.

To configure the App Center Distribute task, you'll need your App Center API key. Obtain this key by creating a new API token with full access in your App Center dashboard. Then, create a new App Center connection in Azure DevOps using the API key and the server URL https://api.appcenter.ms/v0.1.

You'll also need to specify which app you want to distribute the signed build to. Find the app slug by going to your project on App Center and extracting it from the URL. For example, the app slug for https://appcenter.ms/users/vigimm/apps/SkyTube is vigimm/Skytube.

Here are the steps to obtain the app slug:

Once you've created the connection and specified the app, you can save and queue your build. If it's successful, your signed build will be uploaded to the releases of the defined destination.

Now that your signed build is in App Center, you can distribute it to your beta testers or further redistribute the release to another group.

App Center Analytics helps you understand user behavior and customer engagement to improve your app. The SDK automatically captures session count.

You can also define your own custom events to measure things that matter to your business.

All the information captured is available in the App Center portal for you to analyze the data.

Analytics is a crucial aspect of app development, helping you understand user behavior and customer engagement.

App Center Analytics automatically captures session count, device properties like model, OS version, etc.

This means you can get a clear picture of how users interact with your app without having to write any code.

With App Center Analytics, you can define your own custom events to measure things that matter to your business.

This flexibility allows you to track specific actions, such as purchases or sign-ups, and see how they impact your app's performance.

All the information captured is available in the App Center portal for you to analyze the data.

This makes it easy to identify trends, spot issues, and make data-driven decisions to improve your app.

Crashes happen to the best of us, and it's essential to know what's going on when they do. App Center Crashes will automatically generate a crash log every time your app crashes.

Crash logs contain valuable information to help you fix the crash, and they're written to the device's storage. The log will be sent to App Center when the user starts the app again.

Azure App Center prioritizes the security and compliance of your app data.

App Center fully supports GDPR, ensuring that your app data is handled in accordance with the regulations. This means you can trust that your data is secure and compliant.

We have extensive documentation to explain how data is handled, giving you full visibility and control over your data. This documentation is a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand how App Center handles data.

You can submit data subject requests through App Center, providing a straightforward way to manage data subject rights.

App Center's code base is scanned by internal Microsoft tools to catch issues like outdated dependencies and known security vulnerabilities. Any issues found are displayed in a security dashboard and addressed by the engineering team.

The service uses Azure's infrastructure to log and monitor key aspects, ensuring legitimate activities and detecting potential breaches. All deployment and administrator activities are securely logged, as is operator access to production storage.

In the unlikely event of a security incident, App Center has a clear response plan outlining responsible parties, steps to secure customer data, and how to engage with security experts.

App Center's code base is scanned by internal Microsoft tools for issues such as out-of-date dependencies, and known security vulnerabilities. Any issues that are found are shown in a security dashboard, and addressed by the engineering team.

To ensure the security of App Center, internal Microsoft tools scan the code base regularly. This helps prevent potential security risks.

App Center uses Azure's infrastructure to log and monitor key aspects of the service, including activities to detect breaches or attempted breaches. All deployment and administrator activities are securely logged, as is operator access to production storage.

In case of a possible intrusion or high priority security vulnerability, App Center has a clear security incident response plan in place. This plan outlines responsible parties, steps required to secure customer data, and how to engage with security experts.

App Center follows the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle, which ensures that security is integrated into every stage of the development process. This approach helps prevent security vulnerabilities from being introduced in the first place.

App Center hasn't pursued external audits, such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or external penetration testing, as few of our customers require it.

We're subject to multiple internal Microsoft, Azure, and Cloud & AI Division compliance systems and requirements.

These requirements overlap significantly with what you'll find in external audit programs.

Staying in compliance with Microsoft's internal Azure requirements means that our security and business continuity stance is nearly identical to systems that have completed external audits.