In this lesson we’ll go over the app publication process for your customer’s apps. We’ll cover everything from what to do before you submit an app to the process of submitting an app to our publishing team.

There’s a number of things that need to be done before you can submit an app to be published. Doing these helps ensure that you and your customers have as smooth of an app submission as possible. Before you submit an app make sure the following have been done:

The first thing that your customers need to do is to enroll in the Apple and Google developer programs. It’s a requirement from both Apple and Google that each app is published to an account that’s directly related to it. This means that if you already have your own developer accounts you can’t host your customer’s apps for them as that will be viewed as a violation of the app stores’ policies. Once they have created developer accounts they’ll also need to give access to their accounts to our publishing team so that we can submit their app. We’ll go over this in further detail later on in this lesson.

Along with making sure your customers have their own developer accounts, you should also go over Apple and Google’s other app store guidelines with them to make sure their app adheres to them. You can access Apple’s App Store guidelines here, and Google’s Play Store guidelines here.

Make sure that you go over the guidelines again from time to time as Apple and Google will make changes to them periodically. Ensuring that your customers apps adhere to these guidelines will give them the best chance of being approved.

Make sure your customers’ apps are assigned to a paid configuration. This means that their app should be assigned to either a Premium, Professional, or Enterprise level configuration. Not doing so will mean that the publishing information page of the App’s Dashboard won’t display correctly and you won’t be able to submit the app to be published.

If you have the DIY System included on your reseller plan you can set it up so that once a customer signs up for one of your paid plans their app should automatically be assigned to a paid configuration. We go over the DIY System in the next couple of White Label account lessons, the first of which you can access here.

If you don’t have the DIY System included in your reseller plan then you’ll need to manually switch your customers’ apps over to paid configurations. If you don’t know how to do this we encourage you to check out our lesson on App Management which you can find here.

Once your customers have their app assigned to a paid configuration and they’ve created developer accounts, either you or they will need to fill out the Publishing Information page of the App Dashboard. Once that’s done they’ll press a button to submit their app to our publishing team. If they need assistance with this you can send them this article from our non-branded knowledge base which goes over everything that’s needed in the Publishing Information page.

As we previously mentioned your customers will need to have their own developer accounts for their apps. For Apple’s developer program they require an annual charge to keep the account active, and what type of app your customer’s is dictates what type of Apple developer account they need to sign up for. Unlike Apple, Google processes a one-time fee to enroll in their developer program and they only have one type of developer account.

If your customers’ app is designed for public use, i.e. used by people outside of their company, then they’ll need to sign up for either an individual or organization Apple developer account. If their app is for internal use only, i.e. by only people in their company, then they’ll need to sign up for an Apple Enterprise developer account.

If your customers need assistance in how to enroll in either an individual or organization developer account in the Apple developer program you can send them this article from our non-branded knowledge base which takes them through the entire process. If they need to sign up for an Enterprise developer account, then you can send them this article which goes over that process. The only time that they’d need to enroll in an Enterprise developer account is if their app is for internal use only. Make sure that your customers know that enrolling in an Apple developer account comes with an annual cost.

We know that the enrollment process can be confusing for some people, so if after signing up for an account your customers are unsure if they’ve fully enrolled in Apple’s program you can send them this article from our non-branded knowledge base which shows them how to make sure that they’re fully enrolled.

Unlike Apple, Google only has one developer account type. If your customers need assistance on how to sign up for a Google developer account you can send them this article from our non-branded knowledge base which goes over the entire process. Google charges a one-time fee to create a developer account with them.

Once your customers have enrolled in the Apple and Google developer programs they’ll need to add our publishing team to their accounts as an App Manager for Apple and a Release Manager for Google.

Once your customer has enrolled in the Apple developer program they’ll need to add this publishing email address as an App Manager to their account so that our publishing team can access their account to submit their app:

publishing@appdocumentation.com

If your customer needs assistance with how to add us as an App Manager then you can send them this article which goes over the entire process.

Once your customer has created a Google developer account they’ll need to add this publishing email address as an Admin (if it is an individual developer account) or App Manager (if it is a business developer account):

publishing@appdocumentation.com

If your customers need assistance with how to add a user as an Admin or App Manager to their Google developer account, you can send them this article from our non-branded knowledge base which takes them through the process.

To gain insight into your clients app process on Google, have your clients add you to their Google developer account as well as an App Manager.

Once your customers have their own developer accounts, have given our team access to their accounts, and their app is on a paid configuration, all that needs to be done is to fill out the Publishing Information. You can access the Publishing Information page by clicking on “Advanced” then selecting “App Publishing Info” in the App Dashboard:

If there’s anything missing such as an app icon, you’ll see a pop-up like this:

Once those items have been resolved fill out the publishing information and agree to the terms. Then click on “Yes, Submit For Publishing” and the app will be sent off to our publishing team.

When you send your app off to our publishing team it typically takes them a business day or two in order to compile the necessary files and get your app ready to submit to Apple and Google. Once the app has been submitted it goes through Apple and Google’s review processes.

Google typically takes 2-3 business days to review an app while Apple typically takes 7-14 business days, but that timeframe can change based on how many apps are in their queues to review. Keep these timeframes in mind when you submit your app, especially if you need your app live by a certain date. We do our best to get the app sent off to Apple and Google as quickly as possible, but once the app has been submitted, it’s in Apple and Google’s hands.

This concludes our sixth lesson where we went over the process of publishing your apps. In our next lesson we’ll go over the first part of the DIY System.

Now that you have completed this lesson, you can continue on to the other lessons in this series here:

Still have questions? No problem! Reach out to us and we’d be happy to help :)