How to Override a WP7 App Submission

I love writing apps for Windows Phone, and I’ve devoted quite a lot of time to my most popular one, CascadeSkier. A few times along the way, I’ve discovered a major bug AFTER submitting my application for marketplace testing. In both cases, these were not bugs that the marketplace process was going to catch. Because it usually takes a little less than a week to go through the process, it’s embarrassing to wait for an update to come out that has a major bug and then submit another update and wait for the real fix to come through.

Since you cannot cancel or abort an app once it’s in the testing process, I now use the following approach (aside from more rigorous testing before clicking submit!) When I submit my app, I no longer choose the option to publish as soon as it clears testing. Instead I choose the option that lets me publish it when I’m ready. If I find a major bug, I still have to wait for the testing to finish, but at that point, I don’t publish it. Instead, I edit the application details, upload a new binary, and submit it for testing again. This doesn’t speed up the process at all, but it stops that intermediate buggy build from hitting phones.