PROMT PROMT

Good questions and we have a longstanding action to make this obvious so we don't have to tell developers one at a time... which is what we normally do!

https://community.rws.com/developers-more/developers/language-developers/w/wiki/5529/06-submitting-apps-for-signing-and-or-publication

We'll address this!!  In the meantime:

PROMT PROMT said:

I want to understand what happens after clicking the SUBMIT button in the publishing form.

When you submit your app it will appear in our list of plugins that require attention.  We are not always notified, seems to depend on the type of change, but we do try to look at this regularly and then we will do the following:

1. check that all the details are correct, in the app description and requirements, and also in the plugin manifest if it's a plugin
2. if we have not received this through the app-signing email address already then we will download the app and test it to make sure it installs and runs without errors and also that there are no viruses or malicious code in the plugin (we have NEVER seen malicious code or viruses!)
3. sometimes we don't have adequate access to be able to test if the plugin seems to work and in this case we will contact the developer and ask.  If we don't get a response, and this does happen sometimes, we will try again and if we still don't receive a response we remove the submission and won't publish or action it any further
4. if no changes are required to the plugin we will sign it and replace the submitted version with the signed plugin
5. finally we publish it

This process normally takes a couple of days at most, but there are occasions, particularly when there are many submissions and many things that need to be corrected, where it can delay things for anyone in the list at the time.

PROMT PROMT said:

The second question is about SDL digital signature on our plugins. Do we have to submit these plugins to SDL for signature prior to publishing, or will SDL sign them during the store publishing process?

You'll see from the above response that we can sign this during the submission process.  But some developers will send the unsigned plugin to us at the appsigning address and we'll do it in advance.  This is always required if the app is actually a compiled exe or msi (we do see a few) and the plugin needs to be compiled within the installer.

I hope that answers your questions?

I'll also move this post into the developers forum as it's more appropriate in there given this forum is intended for users, not developers.

Many thanks for the informative and detailed answer.

Best regards

In the course of preparation for publication, another question arose.
After you have signed and replaced the app (point 4 of your previous answer), do you publish it to the store immediately? Or there is the possibility of delayed publishing if we want to leave the application on hold so that we ourselves choose the day and hour for publishing and press the corresponding PUBLISH button.

PROMT PROMT

You can delay it by simply not submitting.  But because you need to wait for us to accept and publish because we check the record before they are published it won't be published when you click submit.

The best thing to do is drop an email to app-signing when you are ready to do this and tell us what your plan is.  Then we will try to work with you to match your goal.  For te occasional release we're happy to do this, but if everyone starts to do it we'd have to think again as we would not be able to manage the process in that way.

We are looking at how we can change the way all of this works to improve the experience and provide a little more control to developers, but this is unlikely to be anything we see available in production in the next year.

Paul, thank you very much.