To publish your service successfully, you must have a fully tested and functional service and, you have to fill out the information necessary for publication on the platform’s web page.
The required information varies depending on the platform, but the requirements are pretty similar. We’re going to go through some of them in the upcoming sections.
This tutorial is going to use the process of publishing to Amazon Alexa Skills Store as an example.
Preparing the service
Here are some tips on how to best prepare your service:
- Make sure your skill is thoroughly tested and has functional help and stop intents. There should be a help option in every stage of your skill. The user must be able to say “help” and receive tips on how to proceed.
- You cannot have a one-word skill name unless you’ve trademarked that word.
- Do not use misleading or untrue information within your skill name, or invocation name.
You can read about all the content guidelines here: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/policy-testing-for-an-alexa-skill.html
Distribution information
In order to get your skill published, you need to fill out the form on the Distribution page in the Alexa Developer Console.
Fill out the mandatory fields on the Store Preview description. Remember, you cannot have a one-word skill name.
Create enticing short and full descriptions to persuade the users to install your skill.
Do not use any misleading or untrue information.
Provide example phrases to help users fully understand your skill’s capability.
The Keywords section is optional. You can come up with some that represent your skill.
You must upload both a small (108 x 108 px) and a large image (512 x 512 px), but make sure they are NOT copyrighted.
Privacy Policy URL and Terms of Use URL are NOT optional if your skill:
Otherwise, you can leave the fields empty.
Once you’ve filled out the form, click the Save and continue button at the bottom of the page.
Fill out the Privacy & Compliance questionnaire and provide the Testing Instructions for the certification team. Testing Instructions are there to let the team know if there are any specific details they need to follow to fully test the skill, or if there are any specific requirements regarding functionality such as account linking. For skills with no special requirements, you can leave the field empty.
Once you’re done, click the Save and continue button at the bottom.
In the Availability section, you define any restrictions for the availability of your skill. You can grant access to individuals to beta test your skill. And finally, you determine in which countries and regions you would like to publish your skill.
Save your data by clicking on the Save and continue button.
We’ll handle submitting the service for publishing in the next tutorial.
