QuickBlox about the App Store app experience

The developers from QuickBlox shared with App2Top.ru the history of the app of one of its applications. Looking ahead, the text that you will read, in short, is about two things: the importance of following Apple's rules and the need to "push" your interests to the last.

The author of the text was Mikhail Marchenko, an evangelist at QuickBlox.

There are different overlays in the development of mobile applications, often related to the human factor. In our startup QuickBlox, one of these overlaps happened in winter.

When working on The Story Wall project, which we were doing for our AppsForGood client based on the QuickBlox product, there was a deadline — the end of January.

But first we need to say a few words about our customer and the project itself. AppsForGood is a large charity that helps schools introduce children to modern technology.

The Story Wall is not so much a game as an educational application that helps children create interesting stories together. This was done for a big event, where the applications of the six winning teams of the children's competition among British schools were to be presented.

The client already had everything ready for this event, the premises, equipment were rented, guests and journalists were invited. Everything was good, the project was done long before the deadline, slowly and without any problems. 10 days before the presentation, we uploaded the game to the Apple App Store.

However, the programmer who worked on this game noticed that the application might not be accepted, since we did not have exactly this text in the Terms of Use text (the template was not adjusted for a specific application and client). In the history of the company, applications have not been rejected because of such a trifle, so we decided not to pay attention to this trifle.

A week later, the project manager, in a relaxed state, logged into the client's account to enjoy the inscription Ready for Sale, but instead got stressed. The build had a Developer Rejected resolution. After that, a conversation took place with the programmer:

— Did you change anything there?

— I changed it, I canceled the review.

- why?

— Well, there was no Terms of Use text.

The team began to panic. The Terms of Use text was already there at that time, but we planned to wait for the release of the first version so that we could then upload the update along with the text. And here's a surprise. I had to raise everyone's ears in 1 day: we made HTML with a transparent background, the text was the right size, the HTML itself was filled in for review again.

Meanwhile, there were 4 working days left before the presentation — an unpleasant situation. The delay in the launch of the game was explained to the client, referring to the recent maintenance session that took place before the New Year in the App Store. To be honest, such an explanation can only work with beginners in this business. But we were lucky in this regard.

The only thing left is for the "small": to push the assembly into the App Store in 4 working days. Naturally, we didn't have any contacts in the Apple Review Teams. All we had to do was take a chance and pray. The manager checked the build status every hour, and a day later someone from the Review Team made Metadata Rejected with 3 simple questions: "what kind of application is this?", "who will use it?" and "does it have paid elements?".

All these questions have already been answered in the description of the application. But the manager wrote them a very detailed answer, what it is, why and how. At the same time, he pushed his point of view that the presentation of the game will be in just 3 days, we need to have time to update the application before it, and in general, come on, approve our application faster, the children are waiting.

But on the other side, they did not calm down, and rejected the application again after a couple of hours, saying "give us a test account." Of course, we gave it, reminding ONCE AGAIN that the mood of the children depends on whether the application appears in the store. At this point, 1.5 business days have passed since the application was submitted. It was late at night, so after making sure that the upsetting child (in this case, one of the App Store reviewers) had everything he needed, the team went to bed. And the next morning we found the build already in the App Store with the Ready for Sale status — the day before the presentation. The result is two days of nerves for the whole team and a happy customer.

Everyone survived, because we got out of this situation without losing face, but we realized that we need to keep an eye on such moments in the future. We are working well together on other projects now. The client did not understand how lucky he was, and we, feeling guilty, did not explain this to him. But what happened was what happened.

QuickBlox is a CaaS (Communication as a Service) service that provides a ready—made server infrastructure for mobile applications.