Submitting Apps
Once you make a decision on pricing and
licensing your app, you are ready to submit it. The two main steps for
submitting and publishing an app through the Seller Dashboard are the
following:
1. Submit the app.
2. Receive app validation.
You are responsible for submitting the app, and Microsoft is responsible for validating and approving the app.
To submit an app, you must provide details about your application. Some of these include:
- App type
- Title
- Description
- Logo and graphics
- App package
- OAuth client ID and secret details (Provider-hosted apps)
- Pricing and licensing information
Some of these details are easier to answer than
others, and thinking them through prior to submitting your app is
advisable. Don’t worry if you get stuck, however; you can save your
submission as a draft and come back to it at a later date.
In this next exercise you will try out the
process of submitting an app to the SharePoint Store. The example will
only submit a test application and won’t submit the app for final
validation with Microsoft, however, the application won’t end up being
published to the SharePoint Store.
TRY IT OUT: Submitting an App to the Store
In this example you submit a Provider-hosted app package to the store for publishing. You need a valid .app
package, artwork, and associated app details. You also must have
created a client ID in the Seller Dashboard.
1. Log in to the Seller Dashboard on the http://sellerdashboard.microsoft.com website.
2. Click the Add a new app link. A page appears prompting you to choose an application type, as shown in Figure 5.
3. Select App for SharePoint from the list and click Next.
4. Now it’s time to start entering all the data about the application. Enter My App into the Title field and 1 in the Version field. Select Travel + Navigation from the Category drop-down list.
5. Click the +
in the logo area. This prompts you to pick a logo. The logo must be 96
× 96 in size.
6. Click the app package icon .
7. Click the
“My app is a service and requires server to server authorization” check
box. This specifies that your app is Provider-hosted and an OAuth
client ID and secret is required. Select the client ID you created
earlier, as shown in Figure 6.
8. Click Next.
9. On the details screen enter a short and a long description for the app. These can be anything you like.
10. You need
to specify at least one screenshot of 512 × 384 dimensions for the
application in order to submit an app.
11. In the support URL field enter the URL of your website where users can get assistance on your application; for example, http://www.acewidgets.com.
12. Click Next.
13. Select the
pricing and licensing for the application. In this example, make it a
paid-for application, so select the “My app is for purchase” option.
14. Select 1.99 in the Price per User drop-down list.
15. Select 50
in the Price Threshold drop-down list. This number signifies that the
most an organization will need to purchase is 50 licenses.
16. At this point you might see a warning about your payout information not being complete (see Figure 7). If you see this warning, click “My app is free” so that you can move on.
17. Click Save
as Draft, unless this is for a real app submission, in which case,
click Submit for Approval. You can now see your newly created app
submission in draft status in the manage section, as shown in Figure 8.
How It Works
In this exercise you prepared an
application submission to the SharePoint Store by providing the details
for the application and associated artwork such as the logo and
screenshots. Behind the scenes Microsoft keeps a catalog of these
details. When, and if, you submit the application for final validation,
Microsoft’s test and verification teams receive your application and
then install it on a set of test systems for verification and testing.
In this example you didn’t submit the sample application for
verification, however, for a production application you would.
After your application has been submitted,
validated (more on that in the next section), and published, the Apps
page in the Seller Dashboard gives you the ability to edit the
application’s details or unpublish the app. See Figure 9 for an example of a published app page in the Seller Dashboard.
Getting Apps Validated
When you submit an application for
publishing in the store by Microsoft, the app goes through a series of
checks and tests. Microsoft conducts these tests to ensure apps are
high-quality and that they meet the rules and policies Microsoft has
put in place.
App developers must ensure their creations meet
Microsoft’s rules and regulations. If your app fails one or more of
these rules, it will be rejected and you will be notified with details
of the failure and the policy that the app didn’t pass. You can correct
the issue and resubmit the app when it’s ready.
The rules that your app must adhere to fall into the following high-level categories:
- App value: Does it provide value to the customer?
- Advertising rules: Does your app show ads in an appropriate manner?
- In-app purchases: Does the description of your app state what is for sale in your app?
- Reliability and performance: Does your app error out?
- Predictability: Does the app do only what it says it does — for example, with customer data?
- Customer in control: Does your app ask for permission to do things with customer data?
- Content: Does your app contain adult or obscene content?
- Accuracy: Does the name and marketing information of your application accurately represent the app?
- Updates: Does an update to your app remove functionality?
- Supported capabilities: Does your app use only supported APIs?
