Publishing to Windows Store: Introducing the Windows Dev Center Tips series

Windows Dev Center offers many options to manage your app publishing process. These include ways to release beta versions as well as ways to target specific packages to different groups of users. Some of these options were just recently announced at Build 2016 a few weeks ago. In order to help you become more familiar with these choices, we’re starting a new blog series called Windows Dev Center Tips to walk you through several common publishing scenarios:

• Publish or update a public app
• Package flighting
• Third party and legacy distribution options
• Side-loading and enterprise distribution
• Publishing hidden apps
• Notes about confidentiality and purchasing

As you review this guidance, remember that the Windows Store enables you to submit apps with one or more packages. The selections you make regarding visibility, description, and price apply to all of your app’s packages, and each package in the app can target multiple OS versions and various devices.

At a high level, there are two ways to publish an app: either enable it to be acquired by any customer, or limit which customers can acquire it. Beyond this, the new package flighting feature gives you granular control to target specific app updates to specific customers. When considering different publishing options, think about what scenario you are looking to support, how much you want to limit access to the app, and if you want to enable any customer to acquire the app or limit customer acquisition.

The decision tree below outlines these options, which we will cover in more detail throughout this series:

Keep an eye out for the rest of the Windows Dev Center Tips series over the coming weeks as we look more closely at the pros and cons of each of the deployment options in this flowchart.