Managing Your App

iTunes Connect is a marketing and business web tool that iOS and Mac developers use to sign contracts, set up tax and banking information, submit versions of their app, and obtain sales and finance reports. During development, you enter metadata about your app, technologies that it uses, and any versions in to iTunes Connect.

Initially, only the team agent, who joined the developer program, has access to iTunes Connect. Otherwise, your developer program team and iTunes Connect users are completely separate. Because iTunes Connect is primarily used to manage the business aspects of your app and people performing those types of tasks are typically not developers, the team agent tightly controls access to iTunes Connect. Individual developers are the team agent for their one man team but can add non-developer iTunes Connect users too. Similar to team members, iTunes Connect users have roles and privileges.

iTunes Connect users with the admin and technical roles perform a number of tasks, explained in this chapter, in support of the development team and before the team can submit their app to the store:

1. Add iTunes Connect users to give other team members access to iTunes Connect.
2. Create your app record so you can configure store technologies and submit your app.
3. View the status of your app when you are ready to submit it or waiting for approval.
4. Change the availability date of an app to release it.
5. View crash reports and customer reviews after your app is available.
6. Create a new version of your app.

About iTunes Connect User Roles and Privileges

The team agent manages access privileges to iTunes Connect. For example, changing the price of an app is a task you likely want to limit to a small number of people in your organization. Access to the iTunes Connect tool is configured separately and is designed to be more fine-grained than the access you set for team members. In iTunes Connect, each user can be assigned one or more roles; each role has different privileges. Table 11-1 describes the roles at a high level.

Table 11-1  iTunes Connect roles and responsibilities

Role	Responsibilities
Legal	The legal role is automatically assigned to the team agent, and only the team agent is permitted to have this access. The legal role allows the team agent to sign legal contracts and other agreements.
Admin	The admin role grants access to all tasks in iTunes Connect except for those assigned to the legal role. A team agent is always assigned the admin role, and this access cannot be revoked without changing which person on the team acts as the team agent. An admin can assign iTunes Connect roles to other people on the team.
Technical	The technical role grants the ability to edit the app information stored in iTunes Connect and to view test accounts for store technologies.
Finance	The finance role grants access to financial reports and sales information. The finance role also authorizes the person to view contract, tax, and banking information.
Sales	The sales role grants access only to sales data.

 

 

Table 11-2 lists the most common modules (areas of iTunes Connect) you need to access, along with the roles that have access to each module. The legal role is not shown, because only the team agent has those rights. All participants can edit their own personal details stored in their accounts in iTunes Connect.

Table 11-2  Abbreviated list of iTunes Connect modules, including availability by role

Responsibility	Legal	Admin	Technical	Finance	Sales
Manage Users
Manage Test Users
Manage Your Applications
Sales and Trends
Tax and Banking
Contracts
Payments and Financial Reports
Catalog Reports

Adding iTunes Connect Users

To add a an iTunes Connect user, read “Setting Up an iTunes Connect User” in iTunes Connect Developer Guide.

Creating an App Record

Certain store technologies require you to create an app record and enter the bundle ID using iTunes Connect during development. Later, you also need to create an app record in iTunes Connect to submit your app to the store. When you are ready to create your app record, read “Adding New Apps” in iTunes Connect Developer Guide.

Viewing the Status of Your App

To submit your app to the store, the status of the app record needs to be “Waiting for Upload” or later. You can view the status of your app in iTunes Connect.

To view the status of your app

1. Sign in to iTunes Connect.

2. On the iTunes Connect homepage, click Manage Your Applications.

3. Locate the app you want to edit, and click the large icon or app name. The status of each version of your app appears below in the Versions section below the version number.

Refer to “Checking the Status of an App” in iTunes Connect Developer Guide for details on each status. Follow the steps in “Ready to Upload Your Binary” in “Adding New Apps” to change your app record from the “Prepare for Upload” to “Waiting for Upload” state.

Changing the Availability Date of Your App

Use iTunes Connect to set a date when the app is available on the store. For example, you can choose a date that immediately releases the app to the store after it is approved, or you can set a later date. Using a later availability date allows you to arrange other marketing activities around the launch of your app.

To set the availability date

1. Sign in to iTunes Connect.

2. Select Manage Your Applications.

3. Select your app in the Recent Activity section.

4. Click Rights and Pricing.

5. Choose a date from the Availability Date pop-up menus.

6. Optionally, edit the other fields on this form.

7. Click Save.

Changes you make to Rights and Pricing go live immediately (expect 24 hours for a full refresh of the changes on the store).

Viewing Crash Reports

All crash logs contain stack traces for each thread at the time of termination. To view a crash log, open it from the Xcode Organizer window. As long as your Mac computer has the archive corresponding to the version of the app that generated the crash log, Xcode automatically resolves any addresses in the crash log with the actual classes and functions in the app.

You view and save crash reports in iTunes Connect from the version details page.

To view crash reports

1. Sign in to iTunes Connect.

2. On the iTunes Connect homepage, click Manage Your Applications.

3. Locate the app you want to edit, and click the large icon or app name.

4. Click View Details for the version of your app.

5. Select Crash Reports in the upper-right corner.

6. Click Refresh Now to retrieve any new available crash reports.

7. Select the crash report you want to view, and save the crash report you want to retain.

To view the crash reports in Xcode, follow the steps in “Analyzing Crash Reports.”

Viewing Customer Reviews

You view customer reviews in iTunes Connect in the same way that you view crash reports, described in “Viewing Crash Reports,”except that you select Customer Reviews in the upper-right corner.

To view crash reports

1. Sign in to iTunes Connect.

2. On the iTunes Connect homepage, click Manage Your Applications.

3. Locate the app you want to edit, and click the large icon or app name.

4. Click View Details for the version of your app.

5. Select Customer Reviews under Links. If you do not see this link, customer reviews are not available for this version of your app.

Creating New Versions of Your App

To create new versions of your app, read “Updating Your App to a New Version” in iTunes Connect Developer Guide.