This walkthrough will guide you through the process of submitting an application to the Windows Web Application Gallery.
Overview of the submission process
The steps from developing an application to seeing it live in the Web Application Gallery are shown below. This document concentrates on the step in Green, which can be exploded out into the process below it:
Prerequisites
This walkthrough requires the following prerequisites:
- A Web Application Package created for the Web Application Gallery. See the Windows Web Application Gallery packaging guide for more information.
- The Windows Web Application Gallery Submission Agreement
- Review the Web Application Gallery Principles and make sure that you comply with their intent
Starting the Submission Process
The Windows Web Application Gallery submission process begins on the Web Application Gallery. This page contains links to all of the information you will need to understand and participate in the Windows Web Application Gallery.
The following items are available on this landing page.
- Application Packaging Guide. This document contains the overview of creating a package for the Gallery.
- Application Submission Agreement. This is the agreement you will need to accept as part of the submission process.
- Application Gallery Policies. These are the guiding policies for the Application Gallery
Submitting your application
To submit your application, you will need to fill out the submission form. This form will ask you for information about your application and your organization.
Items in bold on the form are required. These items are also bolded in the descriptions below.
- Application Information
- Application Name - This is the primary display name for your application. What you put here will show up in the Windows Web Application Gallery, and in all the tools that make use fo the Gallery's Atom Feed.
- Version - The version of the current release.
- Release Date - The date at which the release was made available to the public.
- Application Description Info - Description of the end user functionality.
- Application Description Summary
- Application Description
- Description URL
- Images
- Featured Image - Logo or screenshot 340 x 140px.
- Screenshots - Other screenshots.
- Keywords - A Category from the following list
- Advertising
- Blogs
- Content Management
- eCommerce
- Galleries
- Forums
- Project Management
- Tools
- Site Add-ons
- Wikis
- Dependencies - Any database, software, or other component upon which your application depends.
- Installer URL - Link that is specific for this release of the application.
- Start Page - This is the link that the application uses for a post-installation starting point.
- Support Forum - A link to any public support resources available.
- Professional Services - A link to any Professional Services offering available.
- Enterprise / Up Level Version - A link to any non-free products that are related to this application.
- Video URL - An optional link to a video that describes the application.
- Release Date -
- Contact Information
- Primary Contact Information
- Organizational information for the application producers
When the form is ready, submit the form. This data will be used to populate the Application Gallery with metadata for your application. At the application level of the Gallery, this data will be displayed as in the image below:
Testing
After the application submission form has been sent, Microsoft will review the contents of the form and the application. Our process will be to:
- Download the application package zip.
- Scan for Viruses and other materials that violate the Agreement
- Run some basic tests to make sure the application will install.
Staging
Once the Application has made it past testing, we will stage the metadata so that we can test out the full end-to-end experience. We will ask you to validate that the experience through the Application Gallery matches what you were expecting and designed for.
Production
When all of the testing is complete, and you have confirmed that the application is ready, we will push the metadata into the production version of the Web Application Gallery. At this point your application will be live, and available to all of the users that discover Web applications through the Gallery, and all of the programs that make use of its Atom feed.
What comes next?
Once the application is in production, there may be required updates, or future versions. For any new submissions, just run through the process above again. If your update has security implications, please make sure that you check that box on the form. If you have any questions about the process, please check out our Web Application Gallery: Developers & Integrators forum.