Part 0: Introduction to Appcenter
Published: 2020-06-30 18:04:18

# Introduction
Recently I came to know about the appcenter, and how it is helping to distribute the application for testing purposes to the testers. Application distribution is not the only feature that appcenter provides. We have been using the appcenter for codepush, application distribution for testers, as well as for continuous deployment of the application to the stores.

We will be discussing all the features by implementing them in an ionic application.

Rather than making one long post, I am creating a series of posts.

# App Center
From the official documentation of the Appcenter,
“Developers use App Center to Build, Test, and Distribute applications.”

Though I am not going to describe all the features that are being made available in the Appcenter, but Appcenter have a large number of features to build, test as well as distribute the applications.

We will be using some of the features of the Appcenter, mainly Codepush and Distribute.

In the coming section we will learn the following things.
1. Account Creation
2. Create an Organization
3. Add an Application to Organization


## Account Creation
We will require an account in the appcenter to use it’s features. You can simply create an Appcenter account freely by going to this link.

After you have created an Appcenter account, we are good to go to learn more about it.

## Create an Organization
There might be a question why? Why do we require an organization. Let’s see what the official docs says about it. Why did Microsoft add the Organization feature in the appcenter?

“We recommend creating an organization for any apps with multiple collaborators to better manage users and their permissions.”

So, if you are working for an organization, it’s better to create or help the owner create an organization in an Appcenter.

When we are working in a team and require other developers to collaborate in the same project, we will be required to create an organization and then add all other developers in the organization.

Here’s the roles and the permissions that you can give to all the collaborators that are added in the organization.
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/asam7601hf2uxgwhk84h.png)

For more information about the roles and permissions, do refer to the official docs [here](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/appcenter/dashboard/creating-and-managing-organizations).

So, enough about the theory. How can we create an organization in the appcenter?
Here’s the step.

After you have successfully logged in to the Appcenter, let’s follow these steps.
1. On the top right corner of the dashboard, select **Add New button**.
2. Choose **Add New Organization**.
3. A right-side dialog will appear to add the organization name. Enter your organization name and select **Add new Organization** button at the bottom of the dialog.
4. After the organization is successfully added, you will be redirected to the newly created organization’s homepage.

## Add an Application
Congratulations. You have successfully created an organization. Now, you can collaborate with more people.
So, now we will add an application for codepush.
Let’s list down the steps. 
1. On the Organization’s homepage, click on **Add app**.
2. A dialog will appear which will ask more information to add an application. 
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/1uozhitsmu4fet035thv.png)

3. Enter the app name, and Icon (if you have).
Release Type: **Alpha**.
Os: **Android**
Platform: **Cordova**
After all the details are added, click on **Add new app**.

This will create an application in your organization.

As we will be integrating with ionic application, so we need to create two separate application in appcenter for both **Android** and **iOS**.

Follow the similar steps as above to add another application in the same organization for **iOS** platform.
In __Step 3__, choose OS -> iOS and all other options as above.

For the simplicity purpose, we will be naming the application name as `AppName-(platform)` i.e. `Sample-Android` and `Sample-iOS`.

Congratulations. So far we are doing good. We have successfully added the application in the organization, and in the coming post we will link the this application to our ionic application to see how we can do codepush.