(February 11, 2016) – You’ve spent the past several weeks with your Customer Success Manager building and polishing your app for submission. After your final check-in meeting, you sign the development approval form and are told your app should be live in three weeks. Now what?
App Content Design
From the moment you sign that approval form, the Technical Services team goes into full force getting your app ready for submission. First, your design assets (which include your app icon and launch image) are uploaded to a build server by a technical services consultant.
Settings, Build, and Packaging
Once those are in place, he or she assigns a task back to the technical services specialist to prepare for your initial build. From there, the specialist sets up your mobile analytics account, provisions your app to work on different operating systems, and creates your push certificates, which allow your push notifications to be received by every phone that has your app installed. The specialist then creates your iTunes store page and your app is ready to build.
When all of the prep work is completed, the first official version of your app is built on the back end of the Bluebridge Mobile App Studio. This involves packaging a database of your content together with your customized settings.
App Testing
Once it is built, your app is then installed on our multiple devices and assigned to testing. The technical services consultant then goes through each part of your app to make sure that everything is functioning properly and looks for anything in your content that may cause Apple to reject the build. This can include:
- Charitable giving inside the app
- Incorrect video formatting that affects your app rating
- Any content says “test” or “placeholder”
- Anything that looks empty, as Apple can deem the app incomplete
Testing in-house helps us to get your app through Apple’s review process and into your hands in roughly two weeks from the time the technical services specialist clicks submit.
Submit to the App Store
Once the technical services consultant has thoroughly combed through everything, he or she sends the app back to the specialist to rebuild. This is to ensure we have the most recent database ready to submit. It is then uploaded to your iTunes store page, and all of the metadata you provided us on the App Store Questionnaire form earlier in your implementation process is put into place. The specialist takes screenshots for each device size and adds those to your page, sets your app rating, and chooses availability standards and then hits submit.
Apple has three phases of submission:
- Waiting for review
- In review
(This is the point when an actual person at Apple installs your app, goes through every section in detail and verifies that the app meets Apple’s terms of service.) - Pending developer release
Once the specialist is notified that your app has been approved and is in the “pending developer release” phase, he or she creates your Google Play store page. Because iTunes takes two weeks to review your app and Google Play only takes a few hours for your app to process, your Google Play page is the last step. Your Android app is uploaded, the specialist inserts the same app store information as on your iTunes App Store page and again adds screenshots.
Release
Once your Google Play page is completely filled out, the specialist submits your app and then clicks release on your iTunes page. Both apps will be searchable and ready for download within 24 hours. Your Customer Success Manager will let you know that your app is ready for download, and it will be up to you to decide when to formally launch your app and promote it to the world.
And that’s it! There is an entire team working behind the curtain to make sure your app comes to life as seamless and fast as possible in three weeks or less.
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Author: Brittany Watson
