Errors in the certification of the application in the Windows Store

Hello to all. Here is another article dedicated to the publication of the application in the Windows Store. Unlike the others, it will not contain the algorithm for correctly creating, testing, and putting the application to the Store. Only the certification process of the package and its consequences will be described here.

The article aims to help novice developers in advance to take into account and correct all possible shortcomings, so as not to redo your application. I hope that I managed to highlight if not all, then at least most of the possible certification errors. By the way, if you like official documents, you can read “Requirements for certification of an application for the Windows Store,” however, they are not entirely specific and contain phrases like these: “Any flaw that, according to our test engineers, violates the full functionality applications, will cause unsatisfactory certification results "

It is in order to make more specifics and share with you my little experience, I am writing this article.

Preface for those who do not know what the Windows Store

This is an app store for Windows 8 and 8.1. At the moment, it is very unusual and not similar to Google Play or the AppStore. If you go to the top paid (or free) applications in the last, then most likely you will find the reason why each of the programs is in it. In the Windows Store, this is difficult to do (especially in the Windows Phone Store), because, due to the unpopularity of the store, high-quality applications have just as few downloads and ratings as low-quality ones.
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I will give an example so that you can understand. I went to Marketplace recently (Windows Phone Store) and in the first hundred paid top saw a set of applications (apparently from one author) of which you can build a whole drama: How to choose a girl → How to seduce a girl → How to make an offer → How to entertain a child → How to quit girl → How to understand a cat. I repeat that it was a paid top and people really paid for these applications.

Application Publishing

The process itself is well described by the user itdevelop in his article . I will not repeat, therefore, if you have not yet read, but there is a desire to publish something of your own in the Store - I advise you to read it.

I want to add only its ending. Now applications are tested fairly quickly, despite the fact that they write in the “Certification Status” window that some verification steps may take about 5 days. The first issue I, for example, checked in less than 8 hours. The second is a little longer (12-15), apparently, it was the weekend, or I checked which changes I made.

Also worth noting is the fact that you do not immediately appear in the store. According to my observations, its cache is updated about once a day, and, unevenly. First, about 5 hours later, my application appeared there (when I clicked on the link provided to it), then a page with all my applications appeared (+ 5-7 hours), then it began to appear in the search (+ 4- 5 hours) and, finally, when typing his name in the search bar, about a day after publication, it began to appear as a hint.

And finally, I want to tell you about another negative point. The statistics of downloads, ratings, reviews and all other things are updated approximately every 2-3 days. True remark from Danov . Statistics are not updated every two to three days. Just today, data that was relevant 2-3 days ago is displayed. That is, if you had N reviews on Wednesday, most likely they were left on Monday. Moreover, both in the Store itself and in the developer’s panel.

Certification errors

Finally we got to the most important. About the certification itself has already been higher, now it is worth saying what happens after it. There are two options. Either you get to the Store, or you get a response from Microsoft testers, to which a PDF file is most likely attached, which describes how and where exactly they received the error. So what can you get from them?

Your application does not comply with requirement 1.2.

Possible reasons:

• some parts of the application do not work or contain placeholders (“soon”, “will be added”, etc.);
• the application does not work with all the architectures whose support is claimed;
• The description of the application is unclear or misleading;
• The application description includes screenshots or statements that can be used to conclude that functions are not implemented in the application;
• the application can not control the automatically reproduced sound;
• There is no explicit indication of the hardware or network requirements in the description.

The first thing to check is the description of your application in the Store. I will give a simple and clear example. In the game that I wrote, you need to put all the figures in the field provided. Something like this I wrote in the description, and in the program itself, in the “Rules” section I added a section related to management, saying that you can turn the figures by right-clicking on them. However, as you understand, this is not enough, because the user may not look into this section. He must clearly know everything from the description. Therefore, if you have any such hidden management capabilities, it is worth mentioning them explicitly.

Regarding the first point: as I understand it, you can use the same placeholders "soon" and so on. At least with me, my application passed certification (more precisely, it did not pass by other parameters). But you can use them only if they do not limit any basic features of your program. An example of the unsuccessful use of such a placeholder: you indicated that you can listen to music in your application, but it turned out that "this will be added soon." However, if you indicated that you can listen to music, and in the application itself it was broken up into performers, then you may well declare that in the next update N more of them will be added.

I also advise those who make some logic games or something similar to tell the testers (in the release notes) answers to some of the levels so that they can check the performance of your program and see what happens after passing the level. Most likely, they will check it anyway, just if they have answers right away, they will do it much faster. And this is good for you. Similar actions should be taken if the application requires authorization anywhere.

Your application does not comply with requirement 3.2.

Possible reasons:

• application crashes while loading;
• the application fails from time to time or repeatedly;
• the application stops responding.

There are a lot of reasons. It is possible that you did not take into account something. Therefore, always with the publication (at least with the first one exactly) do the application check with the WACK utility (VS offers, after assembling the package). It takes about 5-10 minutes, but then you will definitely make sure that the application does not fall by 90% under this error.

It is also possible that you are not using asynchronous loading somewhere, and therefore the application hangs. Async / await is a simple and useful thing - try it, the application will only get better from this.

And the last - do not try to download the application under Windows 8 as Windows 8.1 or vice versa. It will simply fall during the test and you will not be certified for this very reason.

Your application does not comply with requirement 3.5.

Possible reasons:

• one or more tile elements in the application do not respond to touch;
• The application does not support keyboard and mouse.

The most foggy here is the "keyboard and mouse." In general, everywhere in the documents there are requirements that the application "must support touch input, as well as a keyboard and mouse." And, in fact, it means “keyboard and / or mouse,” because, you see, not all keyboard support is needed.

It is also worth checking whether the person from the tablet can fully manage your application. So it was in my case: I put the handler on a double click with the right mouse button, but I completely forgot about the fact that the finger does not have the right key. I also had to hang up the double-touch handler. If you want to be sure that you have not missed anything - run the application in test mode using the Simulator (in Visual Studio, select it as the machine on which the application is running, and then select the touch screen mode) and try do all that you would do on a computer.

Your application does not comply with requirement 3.8

Possible reasons:

• the application runs for more than 5 seconds;
• application is suspended for more than 2 seconds.

It is difficult to test if you do not have low-power devices, but only a laptop with 8 GB of RAM on board. However, I can advise you to remember about async / await (the benefit of tutorials is already enough) and to use asynchronous loading of some not so important data. For example, if you wrote the same media player, you can load the playlist and gradually, after the main download of the application. Similarly with suspension. Record only the most important data. Plus, maybe some of them can be recorded while the program is running, and not at its completion?

Your application does not comply with requirement 4.1.

Possible reason: the lack of a privacy policy page.

This error occurs when you publish an application that requires Internet access. In this case, you must add to the application itself a page describing that you are not transferring data to third parties, as well as create a similar page on the Internet and specify a link to it when publishing the application. And, of course, if you publish data in any way, you must request confirmation of this.

Your application does not comply with requirement 6.8.

Possible reason: change the screenshot in the graphical editor.

In fact, not only is the cause of this error. Of course, we all know that the developer cannot edit screenshots (because they usually do it with the help of the Simulator, and not less than 1366 × 768, otherwise they refuse), but they can add one of their promotional image if they want. However, there is another reason for the occurrence of this error - the screenshot signature (or the screenshot itself) is not in the stated language.

And again an example of "from life": When I added an application, I published it through Chrome. I filled in the screenshots in the required language (it was Russian; by the way, the screenshots should be in the description language!), And when I wrote the description it was not saved. I do not know why. Instead of “Gameplay”, “Buh” was saved and an error was issued. Apparently, there somehow, through JS, the keys were caught while typing, or something like that. What would you do in this place? I just took it and wrote: “Gameplay”. This was the reason for the rejection of the application.

Here it is worth noting an important fact: publish your application using Internet Explorer . This is a kind of guarantee that everything will work in the developer panel exactly as you expect. In it, the phrase "Game process" was preserved from the first attempt.

Afterword

Finally, I would like to wish you, first of all, to publish high-quality applications, and Microsoft will more objectively evaluate applications, and not chase them. Now there are a lot of low-quality products in the Store, which are ordinary copy-and-paste from Wikipedia, and even crookedly decorated. Example:



And there are not two such applications. This is from a female developer and she already has such 75 pieces. All are decorated exactly the same, made on just one template and do not carry any semantic load.

Similar applications are from some other developer. He has 69 of them. The meaning is the same, only foreign groups and tiles are decorated more beautifully. It is a pity that the company does not follow the first paragraph of its rules:

1.1 The application must be unique , creative and useful to the user, with versions in all languages ​​and for all markets that it supports.

I really hope that there are no such "developers" among the Habrazhitele.


If you find any errors or omissions - please write to your private messages.

Thanks for attention.