This article aims to show how to submit, in the Store, the Menu App created by Windows AppStudio. See more in the following articles
Publish an application in the Windows Store is the last step we need to do for have the application available in the store, but publish the application is not only to take a package and add it to the store, there are some steps we need to do.
In general, the main steps we must do are
Now, let's see it in more detail.
After the application is created each developer should test the application in simulator or in real devices, in some cases is good to test the app in different devices with different characteristics (but is not required!).
The following articles will help to run the app in simulator or in devices
For Windows AppStudio apps is recommended to see the following video for help in the side-loading process: Generating, Sideloading, and Publishing Windows App Studio 8.1 apps for Tablets and PCs.
Sometimes couldn´t be easy to test our application or we don´t know what to test, a simple and good test is to provide the package to our friends or beta testers for they provide a feedback about the app, normally they saw issues that the developer not see. But before it, is recommended that each developer should do the basic tests provided in the following article Testing apps for Windows Phone 8.
In the article Testing apps for Windows Phone 8, we can find the App certification requirements for Windows Phone that are very important! If our app not respect this requirements the application will fail the certification and we should be updated about the changes in these requirements, for see the last changes read the article the App certification requirements change history for Windows Phone and finally we could read the Top Windows Phone app certification failures and how to avoid them. For Windows apps, you should read App certification requirements for the Windows Store and the common certification failures.
Each issue we find based in tests should be fixed and a new version should be created for apply new tests. After the app looks great you can skip to next step.
The next step is to take the screenshots that are required and this screenshots will showed to the user, and we only can upload up to 8 screenshots. For take the screenshots we can use the simulator, because it has a great feature for it, we only need to deploy the app in simulator as following
When we click in "Capture" button, the screenshot is taken and the image is save in a folder we defined.
Associate the app with the Store and generate packages
We can associate the app to the store and for it there are two ways: associate in Windows AppStudio or associate in Visual Studio.
The last step before generate the app (in Windows AppStudio) is the Publish, where the user can define the app title, the app description, the language, allow to connect the app with the store. The following screen show the Publish separator
In Publish separator (we saw above), click in "Associate App with the Store", it will show the following form
For fill this form, we should open the Dashboard in Windows Phone Dev Center or in Windows Dev Center for get the information about our account (Publisher GUID, Publisher name)
And in the Dashboard we will find the Account option.
The information about the Menu App (App identity and App display name) is got after we create the application in dashboard, by clicking in Submit App.
Then we will have
At the end, we will have
After save all, it's time to generate the app, for it, click in finish and then Generate. Now we need to choose Publish Packages, for create the packages for the store
After it we will get
At this moment we have the packages for the store.
For how that modified the app in Visual Studio or got the source code from in Windows AppStudio, is possible to connect the app with the Store, by doing
And then need to follow the wizard
At the end we will have an xml file with the store information, like following
After it is possible to generate the packages, as following
And we will get another wizard where we can choose if the package will be for store, and at the end we can set the package version, the output folder and others
In this cases, the packages are created for submit in store and the last panel will show the output path for the package and an option for run the Windows App Certification Kit
If we click for "Launch Windows App Certification Kit" we will see the following wizard
Windows App Certification Kit is an automatic process for verify if the app is ok and it allow to select which test we want to run, in general, we should select all!
At the end, it will show the result, if passed or not and provide a report with more details. See the complete report here: MenuApp-WindowsAppCertificationKit-Report. If the app do not passe these tests, we should not submit the app in store until the issues reported in report are not fixed.
Note: One app that passed in this test can fail in others tests that this test do not test, but if the app not passed in these tests will not pass in store, too. For get more information about it, see the article Using the Windows App Certification Kit.
Before go to the Dev Center for submit the app, we should prepare all artwork. The screenshots are taken, the app title icon with 300x300 should be created and if need create the background image with 1000x800, square icon with 358x358 and wide icon with 358x173.
Is recommended to see this App submission checklist which help to prepare and organize all the required info.
Now is time to upload the package and fill the required data (description, keywords,…)
Choose the option 2, click "add new" and then choose the package
It will be uploaded and will showed the package name, version, package details
A form for description, keywords
And the options for add the artwork
Note:
At this moment all data was filled and the app can be submitted to the certification process. If there is question about the certification process, and the different stages, we can find detailed info here.
In some cases, can be useful to add some notes to the testers (from certification process), for see how we should do it see the article Providing info to certification testers.
Now the sky is the limit and our app can be one of the top apps
For it we should promote our app, see more about in this article How to Market and Promote your apps on Windows Phone and Windows 8.
Excellent article