





Next week we will begin the migration of accounts to the new Windows Dev Center dashboard.

You can expect account migration to take place in waves – starting next week and extending into July. The migrations are scheduled based on account feature usage, for example starting with accounts that have used basic platform capabilities, then moving to accounts that use more advanced capabilities. This allows Dev Center to test that the migrations are successful, in controlled steps, and minimize impact.

You do not need to take any action to have your account migrated. We will automatically migrate you and will notify you via the contact email in your account dashboard once your migration is complete. Please note, accounts will not be accessible for a few minutes during the actual migration process.

Once your account is migrated, you will have the ability to submit and manage your apps in the new Windows Dev Center dashboard (currently available in read-only Preview mode). Upon migration, you will no longer have access to the Windows Phone or Windows Store dashboard. Windows 10 package submissions will not be available upon migration, rather enabled upon release of the new Windows 10 developer tools.

This blog describes the new functionality and changes you will see once your account is migrated.

New functionality available for all accounts

Starting this month, all Dev Center accounts have access to some new features:

App marketing and promotion

Promote your app – ability to purchase ads for your apps directly from Dev Center, or create free house ads to cross promote your apps

Integrate with analytics to understand more about your apps’ performance – use the new analytics capabilities to gain deeper understanding of which customers are downloading your app, where your app is crashing, how customers are using your app, which operating system customers are running, and many more new analytic capabilities.

View new analytic reports export data that was not available before for all apps: ratings and reviews, failure logs and ad mediation fill rate.

Account registration, app submission, management and payout

Get monthly payments through a single deposit for earnings from both Windows and Windows Phone apps.

New functionality available for migrated accounts

Additionally, once your account is migrated to the new Dev Center you will have access to additional features.

Account registration, app submission, management and payout

Submit Windows and Windows Phone apps and games through a single submission flow – the new dashboard allows you to submit packages for all Windows devices in a single flow. You no longer need to submit apps to two separate dashboards to publish to phone, tablet and PC.

View and manage your linked apps as a single app with multiple packages – previously linked apps will now be managed as a single app with packages for each operating system your app targets (Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 in the future).

Set a publish date for your apps – set the date and time for an app or IAP to be published in the future, new for Windows Phone.

App monetization

Publish your app to 242 markets – previously on Windows Phone it was 191 markets.

Publish IAPs more easily, and publish a larger number of IAP items – update or add in-app products to your app independent of the app publishing process, giving you more flexibility and agility to update your IAPs. The new Dev Center also removes the limit of 200 IAP items that existed previously in Windows Dev Center.

Changes in the new dashboard

The new Dev Center flow is designed to prompt you to accept the App Developer Agreement (“ADA”) before you are granted access for the first time. This is a process required in the new Dev Center, though you don’t need to review the ADA again, as it has not changed since its release on April 29, 2015.

We will continue to roll out new features over the summer. Below are some capabilities that are not available yet in the new Dev Center, but will become available later in summer.

Price discounts – the Windows Dev Center will enable in the future to schedule temporary price discounts for apps in the Store for Windows 10 devices. To schedule price changes that show up in Windows Phone and Windows 8.x devices, you need to change the price of the app through a new submission.

– the Windows Dev Center will enable in the future to schedule temporary price discounts for apps in the Store for Windows 10 devices. To schedule price changes that show up in Windows Phone and Windows 8.x devices, you need to change the price of the app through a new submission. Beta apps– this feature existed in the Windows Phone Dev Center but is not yet available in the new Dev Center.

App category and pricing set in the new Dev Center will be adjusted to take into consideration differences between the Store for Windows 10 customers and the Store for customers on previous OS versions (the Store in Windows Phone 7.x, Windows Phone 8.x, and Windows 8.x), as described in my previous blog:

Market-specific pricing will be ignored in apps shown to customers on Windows 8.x devices

The category will be mapped to similar categories in Windows 8 and Windows Phone

One thing you won’t see in the future are the emails you have been receiving to inform you when your Windows Phone apps are being promoted in the Store. These emails will cease on June 8, 2015. The new Store generates personalized app recommendations, so there is not a specific day when your app will appear in all devices.

Also, you will see in the new dashboard that any new app or update will require a Store age rating, so all the apps and games, over time, will have an age rating. This was a requirement previously for Windows, though not on Windows Phone app submissions. This change helps consumers have a more robust way of managing age appropriateness of apps and games. Also, there is no longer a need to use GDF files to add age ratings to app submissions, making it even simpler for you to make your app available in more markets.

Get ready

To prepare for your account migration, you’ll want to read this blog post providing details on changes and the actions you will want to take to prepare. I also recommend you get acquainted with the new Dev Center dashboard by visiting the dashboard preview before your account is migrated, check out our documentation, and view the channel 9 Build sessions for additional insights (summary of what is new in Dev Center, app publishing, advertising and ad mediation, analytics and monetization tools, affiliate program).

Once your account is migrated, please submit a support ticket for any issues you encounter, and send your feedback through the feedback button in the bottom right of the Dev Center dashboard; we’d like to hear from you.