The new App store for office and SharePoint is awesome ,I've published so far two application and I though it may help other SharePoint 2013 apps developers to figure out how the approval process works and how long it takes , also hints and tips to speed the approval process

In my first application (Google Drive Import Beta) It took me around 1 month to get it's version approved on 21th-December -2012  in this blog post I will point out the number of issues I faced till my application get approved.

  • Version Number in Application description has to match the version number in the AppMainfest.xml

  • Be sure to have the latest version of Visual studio template , as the following section is not generated automatically by the old version
  •             
          <supportedlocales>
                <supportedlocale culturename="en-US"></supportedlocale>
          </supportedlocales>
    
    




  • if the application is used to access user information , be sure to add a privacy Policy , Privacy Policy is a useful link to generate terms of use and privacy policy 

  • Be sure to write all the prerequisites in the description field of the application not only testing notes 
  • If you are creating a provider hosted application  you will need to generate a Client ID and assign it to your application 

Remember to test your application well before submitting it to the app store , if your application stop responding or not functional it will  not be approved 

At the end the average time for an application to be approved is based on how many issues you have and how fast your response will be,The single approval cycle takes less than 3 working days your application will be either approved or you will be notified by email that changes needed to be done