code signing - Cannot install company app on windows phone 8

Question

We are developing a company app for windows phone 8.

I have followed every step described in Company app distribution for Windows Phone

Here is what I did:

• Registered company account
• Bought an enterprise certificate from Symantec.
• Exported PFX file with private key
• Generated Enrollment Token (AETX file) from PFX.
• Developed application, built with visual studio and get xap file generated. (Name it App.xap)
• Precompiled managed assemblies and Signed it with certificate using BuildMDILXap.ps1 powershell script. (All messages indicated success).
• Hosted AETX and signed XAP file on our web server.

At this point, when a wp8 phone tries to download XAP file without first installing AETX, The phone gives proper error message: "Before you install this app, you need to add XXXX company account. Contact your company's support person for help".

After installing AETX, when wp8 phone tries to install XAP file, the phone asks for confirmation: "Would you like to install App1 from XXXX?" After clicking "install" button, nothing happens. There is no success message, no error message, no indication of installation, and the application does not show in application list.

I have also tried sending AETX and XAP files over email (in case internet explorer or iis cannot handle file types), same result.

I have also tried doing the same for our company hub app, same result.

As far as I understand, company hub app is just another app (of course for different purpose) and both normal app and hub app can be distributed same way (over web address or email etc), right?

What is wrong? Cannot find the problem here? Any ideas?

Answer 1

I bet you don't have a proper setup for code signing. One important step that is easy to miss is to install the parent certificates of your enterprise code signing certificate (that you got from Symantec). Specifically, download and import the following two certificates and then try to sign the XAP file again.

https://knowledge.verisign.com/library/VERISIGN/ALL_OTHER/Symantec_Enterprise_Mobile_Root_for_Microsoft.cer https://knowledge.verisign.com/library/VERISIGN/ALL_OTHER/Symantec_Enterprise_Mobile_CA_for_Microsoft_Cert.cer

It is sad that the signing tool does not report any errors, yet the output is not a correctly signed XAP that WP8 would accept.