In my ongoing saga with getting a Windows 8 Store app approved, I’ve been battling with a handy little tool called the CredentialPicker. Handy at first glance, anyway. It creates the Dialog layer with the standard Windows 8 appearance for logging in. One of the requirements for getting a Store app approved is that if your app requires the user to be logged in to use it, it must provide an option to register, which can be as simple as a link to register on a website. My app got rejected because I didn’t do this. Since my app is built on the Delicious API, I figured I would just find the option on the CredentialPicker for adding a link to register and get it resubmitted. A great idea in concept, until I found out that there is no such option. It seems like such an obvious ability, but no - you either use the half dozen options on the CredentialPicker or you have to completely roll your own. So a word of advice - plan ahead for how you’re going to handle this, particularly if you use a third party API that doesn’t have the ability to register in it. I sure hope this changes in future releases.
After taking the ridiculous action yesterday of cancelling the release and resubmitting it, my app went to testers and I got feedback within a day. It got rejected for two reasonable and legitimate reasons, which I’ll fix and resubmit shortly. I’m still a bit bummed that it seems you have to “hack” the app submission process, but I’m glad things seems to be moving forward. Finally.
Today I contacted Microsoft support for a status update on my app, since it was on day 14 of content compliance testing when the step says it usually takes 5 days. Despite my previous post, I wasn’t angry, I was just a little annoyed and more curious than anything else. Backlogs happen, and I thought maybe there was some issue with my app on first submission that just required a bit more testing.
The response from support made me a bit upset, though. When I asked for a status update, the response was that support cannot contact testing. The recommendation was to cancel the app submission, and then resubmit and the app would go through faster this time. I had read about this as an answer in the support forums, but I figured they had to be kidding. No joke, that somehow qualifies as developer support. So I guess all of the bluster about making the app approval process transparent was just the Microsoft marketing department having some fun at Apple’s expense.
I submitted my Windows 8 app, Modern Delicious, to the store on April 1. On the 2nd, it went to the content compliance step, where it has been ever since. So much for the bit about it typically taking 5 days. This is day 12. I guess Microsoft isn’t all that serious about getting more apps in the store. If they reject the app for some reason, I’m not sure I’ll even resubmit it. Wait two more weeks for another certification cycle? I could write another app in that time.
I’ve been trying to set up the online Team Foundation Service continuous integration with Azure websites, and failing miserably. It all depends upon the Hosted Build Controller being magically created for you. And if it’s not…you’re out of luck. Take to the forums and beg for mercy. There’s some bug in there, I’m guessing it’s with legacy accounts that have been there since the tfspreview days.
Notes: Team Foundation Service has since been renamed to Visual Studio Online. Eventually one of the members from that team at Microsoft saw my MSDN forum post begging for help and they were able to go in and fix my account.