Recently I submitted my first SharePoint app to the Office Store.
The app is called ‘Index Latency’ and it displays historical data about how long it took for new content to show up in search results in a graph. The raw data can be displayed in Excel Interactive View where it can be opened in Excel Web App, downloaded and analyzed further.
The functionality is exposed by a button in the ribbon in document and pages libraries.
After finalizing the app I submitted the app through the Seller Dashboard where informatie about the app such as title, version, category, logo, support documents, screenshots, licensing, and ofcourse the .app packages itself, had to be filled in.
The screenshots have to be 512w x 384h pixels, a bit of a peculiar size…
The status was updated to ‘pending approval’ and the waiting began…
After just 1,5 day I received an email from the Seller Dashboard Team with the info:
Changes recommended for app approval
That’s fair enough, I didn’t expect it to be approved right away.
After logging into the Seller Dashboard a report could be downloaded with details about the app and recommended changes.
The report contained in my case 2 screenshots where the app didn’t display any data in Internet Explorer 8 and 9 with the recommendation to fix it.
Before submitting the app I tested the app in several browsers as specified in Validation policies for the apps submitted to the Office Store section 4.12.
I tested the Internet Explorer versions with the help of the Developer Tools Emulation tab where the Document Mode section can be used to enulate older browsers. The app displayed data in all Internet Explorer versions, so I got a little confused since the report displayed no data for IE 8 and 9.
I kind of lost faith in the Document Mode emulation and I turned to Chrome and installed some extensions to switch browsers without any luck. Then I turned to BrowserStack and I found the issue in seconds. BrowserStack is just awesome, I must say, and no, I don’t get any money for this. Real browsers with preinstalled developer tools to interact with!
The issue was about ISO dates in the app. Once solved I resubmitted the app and it was approved in less than a day.
The report which is provided in the Seller Dashboard when changes are recommended, isn’t available after changes are made to the app info in the Seller Dashboard. I saw a typo in the app description and edited it. After this action the app is in draft status and the report link wasn´t available anymore. Be aware of this and download and save this report if you want to preserve it.
Submitting an app to the Office Store is quite straightforward, but some version history on app submission results and the report(s) would be nice.