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Setting up Mobile Release Management

Runway is designed to adapt to different release processes and team structures, which means there are a lot of things you can configure. It can be a bit overwhelming at first! Don’t worry: most teams can start with the core setup outlined below and quickly get to a rich read-only state, with Runway understanding and pulling in your existing release cycles, then further customize and automate from there. If ever in doubt, please get in touch!

The steps below assume that you already created an app in Runway. If you haven’t done that yet, check out our docs on adding apps.

Step 1: Configure versioning

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > General and complete the following items:

  • Configure your version settings: Input your app’s version settings so that Runway is able to differentiate release types when predicting upcoming versions or automatically creating new releases.

    • Custom versioning configs

      • Not all teams follow standard semantic versioning, so we offer the ability to set custom versioning configurations that allow Runway to interpret different version string formats and still map them to the correct release. You can set these mappings for different contexts if needed — for example, you could set one config for version strings as they appear in your app’s bundle and in the app stores, and a different one for version strings that appear to users in Runway and Runway notifications.

It’s important that you get these configured correctly, otherwise Runway may not be able to correctly map and reconcile data from different integrated tools.

  • Below are a couple of the most common examples of custom versioning configs. If you’re not sure how Runway might support your team’s versioning convention, please get in touch!

    • {versionConcise} — truncates trailing zeroes in SemVer versions

      • Example: 1.2.3 -> 1.2.3

      • Example: 1.2.0 -> 1.2

      • Example 1.0.0 -> 1

      • Modifier available — minimum digits

      • Example: {versionConcise}[2] : 1.0.0 -> 1.0

    • {versionMajorMinor} — SemVer major and minor digits only

      • Example: {versionMajorMinor}.{appStoreBuildNumber} -> 1.0.1234 (where 1234 is the store build number that was released)

Step 2: Get your core integrations connected

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > Integrations and complete the following items:

  • Connect your integrations: Link the tools you already use to Runway and tell Runway how you use them. We recommend starting with at least the following types of integrations, so Runway can start capturing your end-to-end release cycles:

  • Version control

    • Set the release tag pattern so that Runway is able to read tags from your version control provider and delineate your releases. Reference our Pattern strings documentation to understand the types of tag patterns that Runway supports.

    • Reference our branching strategies documentation to inform Runway how your team branches for releases. Runway uses this to know when a release has started and which commits belong to it.

  • CI/CD

  • Project management

    • Set the “feature affiliation” pattern(s) you use to associate project management tickets with releases (e.g. labels or Jira fix versions). Reference our Feature Affiliation documentation to configure these fields.

  • App stores

  • Notifications

    • You can enable / disable notifications, as well as append custom copy and manage overrides by navigating to App settings > Notifications.

    • Runway can send many different types of notification. You may want to start by setting the primary channel on your Slack integration to a firehose channel. Then, as you start to learn which notification types you want to get in front of your team, you can set override channel(s) on those specific notification types.

Of course, if you see other Runway integrations as important early wins, you can run through and connect as many other integrations as you like.

Step 3: Define version files

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > General and complete the following items:

  • Define the codebase file(s) in which you store your app’s version: Runway uses this to read the current version in your project, and will bump the version in these files during manual or automated version bumps. Runway tries to detect these files automatically when you connect a version control integration, so you may find these settings pre-populated - just double check the values and edit as needed.

Step 4: Configure release workflow

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > General and complete the following items:

  • By default, Runway includes a set of default steps that track key actions across the release lifecycle. You can make each step blocking or non-blocking. A blocking step stops certain automations from running until it's complete, and can optionally also block certain manual actions. You can also hide any steps you don't need. To learn more about each step, view our Releases documentation.

Step 5: Configure App Store Defaults

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > Flightpath and complete the following items:

  • Select the settings gear next to the Submission step and:

    • App Store Connect apps:

      • Select the release type

      • Enable / disable the phased release setting

      • Set the encryption default

      • Set the age rating default

      • Select the upstream CI step that the submission step should use to identify builds

    • Android apps:

      • Select the staged release option and input the initial staged rollout percentage

      • Select if you wish to retain builds from previous releases

      • Select the upstream CI step that the submission step should use to identify builds

Step 6: Get familiar with Runway’s automations

Within Runway, navigate to App settings > Automation and start exploring the kinds of things you can automate with Runway. See our automation docs for the full list, and keep an eye out for the specific automations below, which are often enabled early by teams.

Where to go from here

Once you have completed the setup above, you’re ready to explore more of the platform! We’d recommend that you start by looking into the following areas:

PreviousAdding apps
NextSetting up your integrations

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