Deploying a Windows Phone 7 Application to the Marketplace

Introduction

This is the final article in this 31 day series on Learning Windows Phone 7 Development from the scratch, here in this article we are going to see how to deploy the application to the market place. Windows Phone Market Place is a portal where we need to publish the applications developed using the Windows Phone SDK and making it available to the public for download. Windows Phone Market is a one stop portal where users can purchase apps or games using the credit cards or free applications with ease and provide the reviews to the applications that are very helpful.

Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace can be access using the link https://windowsphone.create.msdn.com. As a developer we need to register with the market place to publish our application for download. For registration Microsoft provides options for Students, Developers and Business to register as per their requirement with some nominal fees per year of registration. Once we registered with the App Hub the market place for windows phone we can able to upload our application to the market place with ease provided the application should follow some validation procedures which are pre listed by Microsoft. As a developer we need to take care of all the certification procedures, you can get the detailed idea on the certification procedures and requirements in the MSDN link http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=183220.

Now let us see the step by step process on how to publish the application to the Windows Phone Market Place. Once we are done with the design and development of the application we need to build the final version in Release Build and we can see the Application package created in .XAP file which is the extension of the windows phone package accepted in market place. Remember that the package size should not exceed 225MB in size which is the maximum size accepted in market place. The package will be located in the BIN folder of the project under Release build as shown in the screen below. The below application is build and completed in release mode and we can see the .xap file created with the name of the project.



Now login to the market place and we can see the option to select which type of application we are going to upload to the market place. The account registered here was a developer account so we have a limitation of submitting 100 Free applications and unlimited paid applications as per the standards followed by Microsoft. At the left side we have the metro tile indicating Submit for Windows Phone and Submit for Xbox 360, we need to select Submit for Windows Phone since our application targets the Windows Phone 7 development as shown in the screen below.



Clicking on Submit for Windows Phone 7, the page will be navigated to the Application Submission page where we need to input our application details and the package (.XAP file) in order to upload to the server for validating the application by the experts. We need to provide the Application Name, target place (Public or Private), the package location and finally the version of the application as shown in the screen below.



Providing the application details and clicking on the NEXT button will start uploading the package to the server and it may take time depending on the size of the application uploaded. We can see the progress of the application uploaded as shown in the screen below.



Once the package is uploaded we will be navigated to the next screen which is the place we need to describe about the application and the category to which the application fits in. Its very important to chose the category since most of the users search for the application based on the category. Once we selected the category and sub category we need to provide the description of the application which will be the place we explain the purpose of the application so that it reaches the audience as shown in the screen below.



Following the description we need to provide some basic information like our website url, and the email address which is basically required by the users to support the team on need basis. Next section is the Artwork where we need to concentrate more, this section handles the icons and the tile images that are basically required for the application as well as for the market place which showcases our application to the end users. The Artwork has different icon dimensions which needs to be taken care prior to start uploading the application. Check this MSDN article on handling the icons and screen shot requirements before uploading the application to market place.http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg442300%28v=vs.92%29.aspx

Once we uploaded the tile images, icons and the screen shots as per the standards accepted by the market place as shown in the above screens we need to click on NEXT and proceed to the next section. Next screen is the place where we need to price of our application as per the developer choice and we have the option to select the target country or to world wide. Just we need to select the base amount and click on Select all in the WorldWide distribution to submit the application to the larger audience. Once selecting the above options click on Next to proceed further.



Clicking on Next will proceed to the final section where need to provide our inputs to the testing team, once we provide the instruction we need to select the publish option, based on the 3 options provided. Once we are done with the selection click on Next to complete the application submission procedure as shown in the screen below.



On successful submission our application will be uploaded to the market place and it will be in the certification stage and we will see the submission success message as shown in the screen below. To check the life cycle of the application certification process click on View LifeCycle page.


Clicking on View Life Cycle will navigate to the page where we can see the different section and the life cycle normally the process flows to complete the validation process and certify the application to the market place as shown in the screen below.



Conclusion

So in this article we have seen how to package and publish the application to the Windows Phone 7 Market place with the step by step approach to overcome the certification issues which normally we make mistakes in submitting the application.

Hope every one enjoyed my 31 days series on Learning the Windows phone 7 development. Thanks to all my readers and followers who keep contributing to make this series a great success.