Publish to Windows Store
Create a windows store account with live ID, https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/dashboard/directory
https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/dashboard/registration/AccountInfo
Click on Dashboard
Select “Submit an app” from the menu on the right.
Enter App name
Reserve your app name before you have the code ready to publish. Your name will be reserved for 12 months.
Application Price
set the price of your app, and your free trial options
Select the countries where you want your app to be available.
When publishing a game, the countries Korea, South Africa, Brazil, and Taiwan require a game to be rated by a rating board and certified to prove the age rating of the game. If you do not have certificate files to prove you have completed that process, make sure you do not select those markets or your app will fail certification.
Select Release my app as soon as it passes certification, so that it gets published as soon as it is certified
Select the category that best matches your app, this will affect where your app will be listed in the store. Picking the wrong category can result in failing certification, because the testing team may not feel the category is appropriate for your app.
Specify if your app has minimum RAM or DirectX requirements.
Only select this check box if you have gone through all the accessibility guidelines and tested your app to ensure it is accessible. Accessibility includes testing for users with low vision or screen readers.
if your application supports push notifications (often used to update tiles) fill in advanced features. Such features are, Connect services such as SkyDrive and Single Sign-On, or in-app purchases.
Choose the appropriate Age rating of your application, and to what age of your audience you are targeting
Some countries requires will also require that your app be rated through a ratings board
you will be prompted to complete a multiple-choice questionnaire to determine your app’s age rating.
If you have already completed the questionnaire for your app in another storefront and have an IARC rating ID, you can select the option to provide the rating ID.
When you have completed answering the questions, click Save and generate.
click Edit to retake the questionnaire if the content of the app has changed in a way that requires adjustments of any of the answers.
Declare whether your app calls, supports, contains or uses cryptography or encryption.
Building the App package
In Visual Studio, change the Build type from Debug to Release
Build the solution by choosing Build | Build Solution from the menu.
From the menu choose Project | Store | Create App Packages…
When asked “Do you want to build packages to upload to the Windows Store”, select Yes. and then select Sign In.
Sign in with the same email account you used for the Windows Store.
Select the app name you reserved to indicate the app for which you are creating a package. If you are resubmitting after a failed attempt to publish or to update your app in the store, you will want to select the checkbox “Include app names that already have packages” so you can see your app in the list.
After you select the app name, select Next.
Choose which platforms will be able to install your application. If you pick Neutral, you will get a single package with builds that will run on any Windows 8 hardware. If you select individual builds you will get a different package for each build type.
For the version number, Automatically increment.
Make a note of the output location, because you will need to upload the file from that location to the store after the package(s) is/are created.
Select Create when you are ready for Visual studio to generate the app package.
Running the Windows App Certification Kit (WACK) test
You are prompted to launch the Windows App Certification Kit. This will run your app through a series of tests to check for issues that could cause it to fail certification.
While it is running you will see the app occasionally launch and close. Do not interact with the app while the WACK test is running.
If WACK test prompt is not launched, select Launch Windows App Certification Kit. This process can take 10 minutes or so.
You will know when it is complete because you will see the test summary page informing you if your app passed or failed. The results window does not automatically appear in the foreground, so you may want to occasionally check your taskbar and desktop to see if the test is completed..
If your app failed, select “Click here to view full report” then investigate and resolve the issues that caused it to fail, then create a new package and try again.
NOTE: JS scripts need to be encoded in UTF-8
Uploading the package
Once the package is created you will find a new folder called “AppPackages” inside the application folder.
Inside the “AppPackages” folder is a file that ends with “.appxupload” extension.
This is the file you will select when you upload your app.
Go to the Packages section in the application submission and then drag your package(s) to the app submission page.
App Description - Describe what your app does and this is what users will see when they look at your app in the Windows store.
Screenshots - Upload images of your app including a logo that the will be used to feature the app.
If you don’t have these images already, you can create them using the simulator in Visual Studio. Change the launch option to Simulator using the drop down key in the menu.
right side of the simulator is a button with a camera icon which will let you to take a snapshot of the screen and put it in your clipboard.
Screen shots need to be at least 1366 x768 pixels (landscape) or 768X1366 pixels (portrait).
Keywords – Specify keywords to help discoverability of your app.
Copyright and trademark info – this is a mandatory field where you specify the copyright information for your application.
Promotional Images – marketing images etc
Website – URL Information
Support Contact Info – An email address, or a link to a website
Privacy Policy - If your privacy statement is less than 200 words, you can put the text directly in the About page of your app and on this submission page (the privacy statement must appear in both places). If it’s more than 200 words, you need to include a URL to a website that displays your privacy statement.
Submit for certification
After you have completed all the sections you should see a checkmark beside every section.
If every section is marked as complete you can now select Submit for Certification.
App submission checklist
Detailed table of what is required to publish windows app
Pricing and availability page
Properties page
Age ratings page
Packages page
Store listings
Provide Store listings in all of the languages the app supports. Manage multiple listings for the same product by importing and exporting Store listings.
Submission options page
Import and export Store listings
Instead of entering info for your Store listings directly in the dashboard, you have the option to add or update info by exporting your listings in a .csv file, entering your info and assets, and then importing the updated file.
This method can not be used to create or update platform-specific Store listings for your app.
Export listings
On the submission overview page for an app, click Export listing (in the Store listings section) to generate a .csv file encoded in UTF-8.
Save this file to a location on your computer.
Open the CSV, the following columns will be visible:
The Field column contains a name that is associated with every part of a Store listing. These correspond to the same items you can provide when creating Store listings in the dashboard.
The ID column contains a number that Dev Center associates with each field.
The Type column provides general guidance about what type of info to provide for that field, such as Text or Relative path (or URL to file in Dev Center).
The default column (and any columns labelled with language-locale codes) represent the text or assets associated with each part of the Store listing. You can edit the fields in these columns to make updates to your Store listings.
Don’t change any of the info in the Field, ID, or Type columns. The info in these columns must remain unchanged in order for your imported file to be processed.
Update listing info
Edit the listing info directly in the .csv file with the updated information
Each language for which you’ve created a listing has its own column. The changes you make in a column will be applied to your description in that language. You can create listings for new languages by adding the language-locale code into the next empty column in the top row, Supported languages.
Use the default column to enter info that you want to share across all of your app’s descriptions.
If the field for a given language is left blank, the info from the default column will be used for that language. You can override that field for a particular language by entering different info for that language.
The text “Default description” will be used for the Description field in the en-us and fr-fr listings. However, the Description field in the es-es listing would use the text “Spanish description”.
For the Release Notes field, the text “English release notes” will be used for en-us, and the text “French release notes” will be used for fr-fr. However, no release notes will appear for es-es.
Import listings
select Import listings on the submission overview page.
Choose Import .csv
browse to your file
click Open
If you’re importing a folder with image files
choose Import folder
browse to your folder, and click
Select folder. Make sure there is only one .csv file in your folder, along with any assets you’re uploading.