Submitting for Certification and Publication

You can use the ASK CLI to submit a skill for certification using the ask smapi submit-skill-for-certification command. This command only requires that the skill ID be given via the --skill-id parameter. For example:

This submits the skill. If it passes certification, then it will automatically be published and made available in all locales specified in the skill’s manifest. You may, however, specify that it should only be certified without publication by specifying the --publication-method parameter:

By setting --publication-method to “MANUAL_PUBLISHING”, it puts you in control of precisely when the skill is made available. This is useful if, for example, you want to sync up a skill’s availability with some marketing campaign or special event. In this case, once the skill passes certification, you can publish the skill on demand or schedule it to be published on a specific date and time through the developer console.

Shortly after submitting the skill for certification, you should receive an email informing you the skill has been submitted. Keep an eye out for an email from the Alexa Skills Team with a subject of “Your skill Star Port 75 Travel has been submitted for certification” (where “Star Port 75 Travel” will be the name of your submitted skill). The email will include a link to the submission checklist in the developer console to track certification status.

You can also track the certification status using the ASK CLI with the ask smapi get-certifications-list command:

If you try this command immediately after submitting the skill for certification, you’ll probably get an HTTP 404 response with a JSON payload indicating that no certifications are found for the given skill ID. But after about a half hour or so, it will return the submission status:

The submission status includes several timestamps related to the certification submission, but three properties are of particular interest:

• estimatedCompletionTimestamp—This gives you some insight into when the certification should be complete, although in practice certification typically completes well before the given date.

• status—This provides the current certification status. As shown here, the status is “IN_PROGRESS”.

• lastUpdated—This shows the time that the status was last changed.

At this point, a little patience is required. A skill may take anywhere from a few hours up to a few weeks before it completes certification. The time to complete certification seems to depend on the complexity of the skill. A simple skill that doesn’t involve account linking, user information, or in-skill processing may only take a few hours to certify. On the other hand, you may be waiting several days or weeks for certification of a skill that requires those things.

Also, while your skill is in certification, you won’t be able to make any modifications. If you want to change anything, you’ll need to wait until certification has completed.

Eventually, however, you’ll receive another email that will let you know if your skill has passed certification or not. If you receive an email with a subject line saying, “Certification feedback for your Alexa skill Star Port 75 Travel”, it means that your skill has failed certification and cannot be published without some changes. While it may seem disheartening to receive such an email, the text of the email will tell you what needs to be fixed and offer guidance in correcting the certification problems.

At about the same time you receive that email, your skill’s status will have changed to “FAILED” in the response to the ask smapi get-certifications-list:

You may also note that the response now contains a new actualCompletionTimestamp property indicating precisely when the skill’s certification changed status. More often than not, the timestamp of the actual completion is well in advance of the estimated completion time. That means that after you address the certification problems and resubmit, you should have hope of getting a quick turnaround.

Even so, it will still take awhile for the certification’s status to change. But assuming you addressed the issues to Amazon’s satisfaction, you’ll receive an email with a subject like “Your Alexa skill Star Port 75 Travel is now live!” (where “Star Port 75 Travel” will be the name of your skill). At this point, if you were to query the certification list again, you’d get a “SUCCEEDED” response:

The skill is now certified and, assuming you didn’t request manual publishing, is available for everyone in the skill’s configured locales to use. If you chose to publish your skill manually, then you’ll find a new entry for your skill in the developer console, as shown in this screenshot:

The entry whose status is “Certified” represents the certified, but not yet published skill. If you click on the “Publish” link in the Actions column, you will be taken to a screen from which you can either publish the skill immediately or schedule it for publication at a later date.

Congratulations! You’ve just published an Alexa skill! Feel free to treat yourself to a release party and take a victory lap. You deserve it!