iOS Distribution Certificates

Introduction

Ready Education offers the most up-to-date, innovative, and stable product to customers by upgrading multiple features in the product suite from time to time. To publish the updates to the App Store, generating a distribution certificate on the customer’s developer portal is required. It is important to grant the Ready Education team the "Admin" permissions and permissions to "certificate" to generate required certificates. More details here.

A distribution certificate is used to distribute your app for testing and to upload it to App Store Connect. Distribution certificates belong to the team, but only the Account Holder or Admin role can create distribution certificates. There is a maximum limit of 3 iOS Distribution Certificates per account. Hence, it is preferred to have one Distribution Certificate be made available for the Ready Education Team to publish the Campus App.

Error: "Maximum number of certificates generated"

After creating 3 iOS Distribution Certificates in an account, the following error message will be displayed when you try to create 4th one: "Maximum number of certificates generated"

If more than three developers need to use distribution certificates in an account, the following are two possible ways to resolve the error:

Revoke Certificate: (Preferred way) Customer may revoke one of their existing iOS distribution certificates that are not in use. This will allow the Ready Education team to create a new iOS distribution certificate to be used for publishing the Campus App to the App Store. Instructions on revoking the certificate are available here.
Export Certificate as a .p12 file: If customers are not able to revoke the existing distribution certificate, then it is required to export a .p12 file from Keychain Access on the Mac that created the Certificate Signing Request so that we can re-use it to sign the Campus App.

Extracting an iOS distribution cert as a .p12 file

A .p12 file is a specially formatted and encrypted file that contains your distribution certificate. It's used by the Ready Education team when building/updating your app. iTunes Connect performs a check for this file when the app is submitted. The app is accepted only if it contains a .p12 file that matches the configuration in your account.

Export the identity from the keychain on the Mac where it was created and share it with the Ready Education team to re-use it to sign the Campus App.

On the Mac that created the iOS distribution certificate, launch Keychain Access, select the certificate entry, and right-click on it to select "Export."
In the export prompt window that appears, make sure the file format is set to "Personal Information Exchange (.p12)" and click on "Save" to save it to your machine after the desired file name is entered.
On the following prompt for the password to protect the export file, please choose a strong password and click Ok. It is important to communicate this password to the Ready Education team securely to be able to use it to decrypt the exported file (You can use 3rd party tools like https://privnote.com/ for secure communication). Ready Education Supports Secure File Transfer, in which case it is not required to choose a password; instead, you can upload the file directly using a secure link. Ask for a secure link when working with the Support Team.
On the last page, when asked for the computer password, enter it and click on "Allow." This is to confirm the identity, and it is not recommended to share this password.

Finally, the file should be available where you chose to save it. Share it with Ready Education by submitting a request at the Ready Education Help Center.