Fastlane: Using App Center plugin -- Testflight group not being found to Distribute

Question

I have Testflight connected for my iOS app in Microsoft App Center.

When I look at the Distribution-->Stores section in App Center, I can see all of the Testflight groups I created -- specifically, I can see the "QA" and "Beta" Testflight groups in the list.

I run appcenter_upload with the following args:

appcenter_upload(
      api_token: ENV['APP_CENTER_IOS_API_TOKEN'], 
      owner_name: ENV[APP_CENTER_OWNER_NAME],
      owner_type: "organization",
      app_name: ENV[APP_CENTER_APP_NAME],,
      destination_type: "store", 
      destinations: "QA", # <-- Name of Testflight group
      file: 'blah.ipa',
      notify_testers: false, 
      release_notes: release_notes_contents,
)

I get this error:

ERROR [2023-01-23 11:22:41.20]: Not found, invalid distribution store name
ERROR [2023-01-23 11:22:41.20]: store 'QA' was not found

Any idea what is going on here?

The "destinations" array documentation says:

Comma separated list of destination names, use '*' for all distribution groups if destination type is 'group'. Both distribution groups and stores are supported. All names are required to be of the same destination type (default: Collaborators)

Any idea why App center isn't finding the Testflight group name I specified?

Doing the same action with "group" specified as the destination_type and passing in an App-Center group name for destinations works fine.

The problem is changing the dest type to "store" and putting the Testflight group name in destinations

Answer 1

For anyone who has this problem in the future, here is the cause of the Testflight group not being found:

For Testflight destinations you have to FIRST do a manual publish to that group from the App Center website. Once you do that, that group is now added as a valid destination for the appcenter_upload fastlane action.

If you don't distribute the first release yourself from the website, the App Center API endpoint will only return "Production" as a valid destination.