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  •   about 4 years ago

Certification deadline and increasing review times

Just a heads-up, I guess some skills such as mine need a bit of back and forth with the Alexa certification team. It seems that the expected response time from the certification team has now gone up to 2 weeks, e.g. my final corrections submitted yesterday now have an estimated response date of 10 Dec, which is beyond the deadline.

I am wondering if Devpost in cooperation with Amazon can somehow prioritise the ISP challenge entries. These can be particularly tricky as ISPs are fairly new and there are some comments or skill behaviour required by the certification team that are specific to ISPs, sometimes not very clear from documentation (e.g. handling purchase cancellation in some particular cases) which may potentially depend on the reviewer to some extent and may tend to cause more iterations than usual.

  • 7 comments

  • Manager   •   about 4 years ago

    Hi Pawel!

    We definitely understand your position and I'm sorry that the return estimates are extending. We have sent all of the skill IDs that were submitted to Devpost to the Alexa team for prioritization. I will bring up your concerns to the team and see if there are any status updates for the contest submissions.

    Thanks for reaching out!
    Stefanie

  • Private user

    Private user   •   about 4 years ago

    I would like to second this as well -- we submitted our updates on Nov 20 and it's still in review. Is there anything we can do on our end? Best

    T

  •   •   about 4 years ago

    This is a concern for us as well, having implemented ISP and account linking. We submitted our revised version on the 22nd of November and waiting for feedback. Would be a shame if many skills can't participate because of the review process. I assume that the certification team has a lot of work from 200+ skills in one batch, a simple solution in my eyes would be to extend the certification deadline. I would be very glad if this topic could be addressed with the Alexa team. Thanks a lot! Edwin

  • Private user

    Private user   •   about 4 years ago

    Just an update -- our skill just pass certification. Hope yours will too soon Edwin / Pawel.

  •   •   about 4 years ago

    My skill has also passed certification now. I think a combination of Devpost contacting Amazon Alexa certification team (thanks Stefanie!) and me doing it independently as well helped to expedite it. Edwin I hope you can get your through quickly too!

  • Manager   •   about 4 years ago

    Hi All!

    We can't help with individual skills, but the Alexa certification team told us they are prioritizing the skills submitted to this contest. We shared all of the submitted skill IDs. I'll ask for another status update today.

    Thanks!
    Stefanie

  •   •   almost 4 years ago

    I could have replied to many other posts on the same topic but to echo what Robert is saying, the certification team is entirely alienating the platform.

    + The "explanation" emails regularly get dropped
    + If they do not get dropped, the reasons expressed do not match what the automated logs are saying
    + No human testing
    As drastic as Apple is with their reviews at least they provide clear action items on the site itself and also a good way to escalate.

    We've been in review, going back and forth, for close to a month now and I'm quasi certain we will not be certified by tomorrow even though we have people using the app in test mode with no problem.

    Contrasting with Bixbi or Google Home certs it's really disheartening.
    And to think of how it would be if we did not get Stephanie and others pushing to help us!

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