How to build an enterprise app with the iOS Distribution Managed Certificate

Hello, I've run across the iOS Distribution Managed Certificate a few times in our enterprise account, but I've never been able to find concrete documentation or wwdc videos relating to how to actually build an enterprise app using cloud certificates (which as far as I can tell is the iOS Distribution Managed certificate that mysteriously appeared in many people's enterprise accounts a few years ago).

Background: our normal enterprise cert is expiring this week and unfortunately, a separate team in the organization generated a 2nd cert already for their app, so we are unable to generate a cert early to overlap the expiration time and avoid downtime. We are attempting to work with them, but logistical challenges might cause us to miss the expiration date - cloud cert would be a great solve here if possible.

Any resources would be greatly appreciated!

I have found this page, but the details are very limited and it seems tat there is some specific detail that is left out since it says the organizer will simply sign with cloud certificate automatically - perhaps a local cert purge is required to get this to work?

https://developer.apple.com/help/account/create-certificates/cloud-managed-certificates/

Replies

An iOS Distribution Certificate can be used with many different Distribution Profiles. Just edit the profile and select the other (newer) certificate. Then I think you have to go to the Xcode preferences, choose the Accounts page, select your team, and click Download Manual Profiles. You can download the other (newer) certificate from the developer site and install it in your keychain, and I think you also have to get the corresponding private key from a machine that already has it installed and install it in your keychain. When you distribute your app in Xcode, you can choose manual signing and make sure you choose the newer certificate.

EDIT: after re-reading your post, I realized that you may be saying that the other certificate is also about to expire. If that is the case, I don't think there's anything you can do, because I think the 2-cert limit applies whether you are manually managing your certs or letting Xcode/cloud manage them.