How to notify testers of new build in TestFlight?

Question

Over the past two years, we've had around 3-400 beta testers. After Apples update to TestFlight the summer of 2017, we've had problems with nearly all our TestFlight-uploads. Sometimes our beta testers receive email/notification about "a new build is ready to test" 90 days too late, at the exact time the build expires, and sometimes they don't receive notification at all. Just a handful of times it works as expected, that they get notified when we the build is available to test.

Is there a secret trick to managing TestFlight? I upload the build, click "provide export compliance"-thing, add my internal and external group, and click "Start testing". The build automatically gets available for internal testing, and is sent to beta-review for Apple for external testing. They approve it within 24h, and the build is available in the TestFlight-app for all our beta-testers. But none of them got a notification saying there's a new build..

Followup: How can we fix this now? Do we have to upload a completely new build, or can I remove the "external testers"-group from the build and re-add them again. Will they receive a "new build available"-notifications? Will they also receive "Build is no longer available for testing" at the moment I remove the external group from the currently active new build? Meh..

Answer 1

Ok. It baffles me how extremely bad Apples dev-websites and services are.

So, in my newly uploaded build, there are two "groups". One called "iTunes Connect Users", which are the internal users who are invited to the developer team. They got an email and a notification immediately when I clicked "Start Testing", because a review is not needed for internal testing. The other group is called "External testers". The build is available for them, but they didn't get notified when the build was approved by Apple.

I was considering removing the "External testers"-group from the build, hoping for a notification when re-adding the group. But, I also thought the group might first receive "This build is no longer available for testing" or something if I removed the group from the build.

I figured I wanted to test this first, to see if testers receive a notification when I remove their group from a build, so I created a new group (called "ExternalTest"), added one single (new)test-member, and added this new group to the same active build, so that there are three groups under that build.

At the very moment I clicked "add group to build", all of our test-devices here, and apparently every single beta-tester, received a push notification from TestFlight, saying that the new build is available to test. Now, our "installed"-number is skyrocketing, as people are updating.

What the hell, Apple? I agree with you, @Nitish, TestFlight sucks badly.