Uploading Your Blackberry App to Blackberry App World

Pre-requisites

First of all, I took everything I already had from submitting IdeaList so it was pretty quick to get (er, stumble) through the process. There are a couple things you’ll need before you get started. These are the small things that you won’t know of until you actually go to post, unless you read the Getting Started Guide, but who does that?

1. Make sure you package a 90×90 icon in your application at the root level. It absolutely needs to be named “blackberry–tablet-icon.png.” *
2. Create a 480×480 png of your icon. I just scaled down my 512×512.
3. Create your screen shots of your app. They need to be no larger than 640×640. I just scaled down my 480×800 shots from the Android posting even though the layout isn’t the same. (I’m not sure if this will keep my app from being accepted, but whatever.)
4. Have your app description ready. Again, I just copied and pasted what I entered for Android.

Submitting Your App

Now to posting. Be sure not to use the browser Next/Back buttons. They may have some serious problems. Instead use the Next/Previous buttons in the site. (FYI, Ihate that.)

1. When you sign in to Blackberry dev portal click the “Manage Products” link.

2. Manage Products page. Click “Add Projects” button.

3. Add Product page – Step 1. Enter your app name as you want it to appear in the Market. Select your category and sub-category from the drop downs under Category. Select your License Type. This is either Free, Paid, or Try to Buy. SKU is a bit strange. It doesn’t give you one so you have to come up with one yourself. I just used my app id (reverse DNS style), “com_swfhead_IdeaList.” When you’re done, click Next.

4. Add Product page – Step 2. Enter your Product Description. You can add other languages by clicking the Add Language button, but I’m American and don’t know any.When you’re done, click Next.

5. Add Product page – Step 3. This is where you will add your 480×480 icon. Under Add Product Icon, click the Add button (shown as Change… here). Add your screen shots here too by clicking the Add Screenshot button. You can not proceed until you add the icon and at least 1 screen shot. When you’re done, click Next. (Notice in the screens below how Step 4 is highlighted? These really are Step 3, that happened because I used the browser back button.)

6. Add Product page – Step 4. Under Carrier Restrictions, just leave the drop down to “Available on all carriers.” If you are restricting by country use the drop down under Country Restrictions. This makes me assume that if you only want to leave out one or a few countries – ’cause you may have to – then you’ll have to upload multiples of your app, but I’m not too sure. So beware. When you’re done, click Next.

7. Add Product page – Step 5. Verify all your information is correct and click Save. This isn’t going to send to RIM for review, though, just saves as a “draft.”

8. Back to Manage Products page. You are only about half way to submission. Once you get back to this page, click the Plus button under “Releases” column for your app. The Goods section is for extra downloads, like in app purchases, I believe.

9. New Release Submission page – Step 1. I just left this all as default NO since I’m not using any kind of encrypted anything. When you’re done, click Next.

10. New Release Submission page – Step 2. Are you using Third Party Content? No? Move on. Yes? check the box and fill in the info.

11. New Release Submission page – Step 3. Are your users going to create something to share or view something someone else created/uploaded? No? Move on. Yes? Check the box and fill out the info.

12. New Release Submission page – Step 4 – Part 1. Finally something important. First, enter the version number of your app, and any release notes you want included. I didn’t feel like it. To upload your app, click “Add Filebundle” button. This is confusing as the top button seems like it is required, hell it’s marked as so. But really if you tried to upload your .bar here you’ll just get an error.

13. New Release Submission page – Step 4 – Part 2. Fill out the name, Pick your Min. OS (I said 6.0 which I figured would be best), select your Language. Click the pencil icon and a new pop over will appear. Click the Add COD file… button and find your app .bar. Click ok on the pop over. (I didn’t get a screen shot of the pop over.)

14. New Release Submission page – Step 4 – Part 3. Under Device Support column, click the little pencil icon. Then under the Playbook column check the box and hit OK.

15. New Release Submission page – Step 5. Verify your information and click Next.

16. Release Page. No, you’re not done yet. Make sure that the “Select for submission” box is checked, then click the Submit Releases for Approval button.

17. Submit Product/Release page. No, you’re not done yet. Verify all the information is correct, all of it, then make sure the “Select for submission” box is checked (it may not be, though it should). Then, whenever you’re ready, click the Submit for Review button.

18. Are you done? Does the Manage Product page tell you your app has been sent for review?

Oh man, that was painful. I know there are a bunch of steps here, but I wanted to be thorough. This process could totally be streamlined, but I’m much to tired to scream about UX right now.

Hope you get your app accepted.

* It’s safe – and smart – to create ALL icon sizes (if you are even possibly going to build for Android, iOS, and Blackberry). These include the standard AIR desktop, Android, and iOS sizes of 512x, 128x, 114x, 72x, 52x, 48x, 36x, 32x, and 16x. But you will now need to create 90x and 480x

** Signing up with Blackberry was a little bit of a pain. If you’re not a business, you actually have to get a real person who is a real Notary to sign and stamp a piece of physical paper so you can scan it in, Photoshop off the coffee you spilled on it, email a PDF in, then wait for some undetermined amount of time to find out if you’re eligible for their dev program. That is, if you don’t forget to actually attach the PDF, because you never actually have to so it’s easy to forget. Just wanted to throw that out there, again.