VSTS - Scheduled release, Azure and XCode build

One more month, one more exciting release of Visual Studio Team Services.

These are my top 3 new features of this month:

Multiple schedules in releases

Want to schedule your releases to be created more than one time in a day? You can now configure multiple scheduled triggers in a release definition.

Simplified Azure endpoint creation

In an earlier sprint, VSTS team made it easier to create a new Azure Resource Manager service endpoint from Team Services. That experience only worked in accounts that are backed by an Azure Active Directory. In this deployment, they are bringing the same simplified experience for all the other accounts that are not backed by an AAD. So, if you are a MSA user and have an Azure subscription that you would like to deploy to from Team Services, you can create an Azure endpoint without having to run tedious Powershell scripts or following a blog.

Xcode 8 signing and exporting packages in the Xcode Build Task

The Xcode build task now supports building your projects using Xcode 8 automatic signing. You can install the certificates and provisioning profiles on the build server manually, or have the task install them by specifying the File Contents options.

Xcode 8 requires specifying an export options plist when exporting an app package (IPA) from an archive (.xcarchive). The Xcode task now automatically identifies the export method if you are using Xcode 8 or Xcode 7. You can specify the export method or specify a custom plist file from the Xcode task. If you are using an Xcode version older than Xcode 7, the task falls back to using the old tool (xcrun) for creating the app package.