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I've built a Windows Phone application and was successfully able to get it into the store. I made a few improvements and created a Windows Phone 8 version and submitted the update. However, it keeps failing the certification process (3 times now). I found one issue with the Windows Phone 7.x version and was able to fix that, but now I'm just getting an error that my application fails to run with a silent failure.

I've tried everything I can think of in emulators and devices, but I can't seem to get the failure to happen. It would really be nice if Microsoft would give you more information. Since they don't, I was wondering if anyone had a good list of all the different condition, devices, and steps you go through to test your application before submitting it.

So what are the recommended testing scenarios to test an app in before submitting it to the store?

(What would be really nice would be to see what steps Microsoft uses when they test an app)

BTW - I should mention that I've used the certification tool and the simulation dashboard in my own testing.

Community
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Bryant
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2 Answers2

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Most of the tests used for WP7/WP8 certification are public and can be seen as part of the Windows Phone certification guidelines: App submission requirements for Windows Phone, Technical certification requirements for Windows Phone and Additional requirements for specific app types for Windows Phone. Have a look at the column titled "Test Steps".

Couple of thoughts regarding you specific issue:

  1. Can you share you specific failure report NSTL test results pdf file?
  2. A good way to make sure your second submission goes through is to simply fix the failure from the first submission, and under the "tester notes" say that it's the exact same XAP with one small fix and how it was fixed.
  3. If you can't repro an issue encountered by the testers, you can always resubmit and under the "tester notes" saying just that and ask for more details if it fails again.
  4. The test team may be using 256MB devices (Lumia 610) for WP7 testing and 512MB devices (Lumia 620) for WP8 testing. Have you tested your app in the emulator under those configurations?
JustinAngel
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  • Thanks for the tips Justin! The CTR says my app fails test 5.1.4 which is launching and has the following comment. Comments: The application cannot be tested for compliance for Windows Phone 8 Application Certification Requirements because it fails to launch on all Windows Phone 8 devices. The application silently terminates at launch. – Bryant Dec 23 '12 at 15:19
  • Yeah, definitely sounds like something with Lumia 610/620. Try checking your app at 512MB and 256MB configurations. – JustinAngel Dec 23 '12 at 19:22
  • I did use the 512MB emulator and it runs fine. They tested it with a Lumia 822 (which I did my testing on) and a Lumia 920. Thinking I'll try your suggestion of resubmitting with tester notes that I can't make it fail so I need more information. – Bryant Dec 23 '12 at 19:25
  • Ok, there is one final step that I took that allowed me to repro the issue. Install the app from the xap that you're uploading with the WP Power Tools directly. Somehow a dll that I had patched was different inside the xap (changed to zip and looked at it after I repro'd the issue). – Bryant Dec 31 '12 at 16:48
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We got this problem recently on our two apps on which the another one was an app we did only some text changes. The previous version passed and launced well and the new version did not. Our reason was very similar as what Bryant tells.

What we did was that after our changes we run the 'Preemptive Solutions Dotfuscator For Marketplace Apps' and upload the dotfuscated xap-file. On our cases the Dotfuscator had changed the size of our own DLL-file (we have our own custom controls for buttons to have two title-lines on the button). At the moment I don't know reason to this but I feel that somehow the Dotfuscator does not found our own DLL properly while dotfuscating (this our DLL is on the References of our project)).

So one reason can be that something goes wrong while dotfuscating. For this reason one should test the dotfuscated xap-file by installing it onto the phone using 'Application Deployment Tool'.

The files and especially the DLL-files inside a yourapp.xap-file can be seen by renaming the file to yourapp.zip and then extracting it.

Tapani

Tapani
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