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I use the Facebook API and an app to automatically post to a Facebook page up to three times a day. These public posts contain recent changes from my CMS, and the "app backend" is written in PHP.

Currently, Facebook asks all app developers to submit their apps for a review. This looks pretty difficult to me, as the data to be submitted should contain a screencast. But there is nothing I could show in such a screencast, as there is only sourcecode creating new posts...

Facebook pages API: "Page Public Content Access" review screencast was an interesting starting point: just don't use a public app, but keep it in development mode. I changed the mode from live to dev, and all posts that were created in the last months vanished from my page. I could see them, logged in with my own account, but neither logged out nor using another account :( Is there anything I forgot to change?

Nico Haase
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  • Dev mode is for testing apps; that content created through it is not visible while the app is in dev mode, is normal and the intended behavior. And PPCA has little to do with posting to your own page, that you are an admin of, to begin with. – CBroe Jul 16 '18 at 06:42
  • @CBroe can you clarify that? Do you mean that I can safely skip the review? – Nico Haase Jul 16 '18 at 15:12
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    @NicoHaase i have the same problem. I have a server that publishes public content on a page, so the application cannot be in development mode. So, i need to review my app but i don't know how would be possible to "screencast my server"... Any updates on that? – guilherme.minglini Jul 19 '18 at 04:07
  • Were you ever able to get it approved? I'm dealing with the same problem. I even created a REST endpoint that creates a link the published content, and submitted a video and included a link to that. But they always reply with "Your screencast doesn't show how the use of this permission directly improves the user experience in your app." I'm not sure what kind of UX is needed in a server side app. – Will Peavy Jan 26 '19 at 02:42
  • @WillPeavy yes, I finally got approved, but I did not do anything for it. Don't know how it got through without me handing in that video :( – Nico Haase Jan 26 '19 at 10:51

2 Answers2

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Just do a screencast of how the server is posting after some event or timeout.

Can you trigger some event on your server and show that new post was created after that? This should be enough for review.

wowkin2
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    Well, I don't think that would work: how should I capture a video of a cronjob executing something? Or have you made other experiences about this? – Nico Haase Jul 24 '18 at 16:05
  • If you use [Flower](http://flower.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) (Celery monitoring tool) - you can show it. But I don't think that you need to show the execution, just show the flow: -> create post in CMS -> run script -> show that post with the same info appeared somewhere – wowkin2 Jul 25 '18 at 08:17
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    @NicoHaase, did it work or are you still waiting for a response from Facebook? – wowkin2 Aug 03 '18 at 13:22
  • I must admit that I had other priorities in the last weeks and have not started working on that review stuff – Nico Haase Aug 03 '18 at 13:55
  • Hi, did you have time to send a request for review? Don't forget to mark the answer as accepted if it works for you. – wowkin2 Aug 29 '18 at 11:02
  • a disgusting decision from facebook, hate it – muinh Dec 04 '19 at 12:48
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    @wowkin2 they don't like my screencast and support wants me to make screenshots of my code. I asked the same for their code but they say it's not secure lol – muinh Dec 04 '19 at 12:51
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After several months of trying, finally manage to pass this review for manage_pages and publish_pages permissions. Important keyword is "server to server application".

Here is what I wrote for both permissions:

enter image description here

You can refer to this page for more details: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/server-to-server-apps/sample-submission

wanjijul
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