Submit Alexa Skills for Certification

Note: Sign in to the developer console to build or publish your skill.

Use the Certification page in the Alexa developer console to run validation tests, submit your skill for certification, and view version history. You can find these options in the left pane of the developer console.

Review the submission checklists

To make sure that your skill passes certification, review the relevant submission checklists for your interaction model and features that you use:

Validate your skill

Use the Validation section to help you find issues that might cause your skill to fail certification. The validation tests verify that all required fields for the Alexa Skills Store are complete. Run the validation tests before you submit your skill for certification.

Note: Validation testing doesn't do the full set of testing performed as part of the certification process. Make sure that you also run the applicable certification tests. For more details, see Skill Certification Testing.

To validate your skill in the developer console

Sign in to the Alexa developer console.
From the skill list, locate the development version of your skill under STATUS, and then, in the dropdown under ACTIONS, select Edit.
Open the Certification page, and then, in the left menu, select Validation.
To run the validate tests, click Run.
The tests run for all locales that your skill supports.
View the results, and fix any issues reported.
Repeat this procedure until your skill passes all validation tests.

The following image shows the Certification page with validation test results.

Submit the skill

When you're ready to submit the skill, navigate to Certification > Submission. If the skill passes the validation tests, you can start the submission process.

When submitting your skill, you have the following options:

Certify and publish now. After the skill passes the certification review, Amazon starts the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store.
Certify now and publish later. After the skill passes the certification review, the skill moves to a Certified status. You can then choose when to start the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store. If you select a later publishing date, your skill undergoes the certification process one more time before publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store.

After choosing an option, click Submit for review to submit the skill.

During the certification review, in the list of skills the Status column shows a status of In Review. During certification you can't make any changes to the skill configuration. If you change your mind about submitting the skill, select the skill, and then click the Withdraw from review button.

Important: When you submit the skill, pre-certification functional tests run automatically. If the skill fails any of these tests, the console removes the skill from certification and returns it to the development status. You receive an email notification indicating the failure at the email address associated with your Amazon developer account. You can view your skill submission history under the Version History tab.

After the certification review, you receive an email at the address associated with your Amazon developer account.

If you opted to Certify and publish now:

If the skill is certified, the email provides an estimated date for publication to the Alexa Skills Store.
If the skill failed certification, the email provides information about the issues to correct. You can make any necessary changes and then re-submit your skill for certification.

If you opted to Certify now and publish later:

If the skill is certified, the email notifies you that the skill is now in a Certified status. You can then decide when to publish the skill.
If the skill failed certification, the email provides information about the issues to correct. You can make any necessary changes and then re-submit your skill for certification.

You can navigate to Certification > Version History at any time to view the status of your skill and any updates from the certification review process.

Submission page in the ASK developer console — Submission page

For skills that pass the certification review and are published, this page shows the Skill Status is Live and includes a list of countries where the skill is available. Some skills aren't available in all countries. For more details, see Content Ratings.

Note: You can also get the status of the certification review by using the Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ASK CLI) or the Skill Certification REST API Reference. For more details about ASK CLI, see the get-certifications-list and get-certification-review commands. For more details about Skill Certification REST APIs, see the Get certifications list and Get certification review APIs.

Publish a skill that has been certified

When you submit your skill, you have the option of just certifying your skill. For more details, see Submit the skill. After the skill passes the certification review, the skill is in a Certified status and you can choose when to start the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store.

To publish a skill that's in a Certified status, navigate to Certification > Submission. When publishing your skill, you have the following options:

Publish now. Start the process now of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store. After you click Confirm to confirm that you want to publish, a message notifies you when to expect the skill to be available on the Alexa Skills Store.
Publish on. Specify a date and time for when to start the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store. For the date, there is a limit on how many days into the future you can specify. Available times are in six-hour windows, and the publishing process starts at the beginning of the window. Expect the publishing process to take up to six hours.

If you previously specified a date and time and the publishing process hasn't started, you can return to Certification > Submission and edit the date and time.

Publication status

The current publication status for a skill is displayed in the developer console on your list of skills, in the Status column.

Note: If you have developed your skill with ASK CLI or SMAPI REST, you use the stage parameter value of development, certified, or live in some commands and API calls. The following table lists the corresponding stage value for each publication status. For more details, see Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface Overview or Get Started with SMAPI.

Status	Description	Stage
In Development	The skill is available to you and any potential beta testers that you have added to skill beta testing. If you have enabled your skill for testing, a user can invoke your skill on any devices registered to your developer account, or on any devices registered to your beta testers' accounts. For more details, see Skill Beta Testing for Alexa Skills.	`development`
In Review	A certification review is in progress. During this time, you can't edit the skill configuration.	`development`
Certified	The skill has passed certification review, and is not yet available to users. To make the skill available to users, you must publish the skill. To publish the skill, you must resubmit the skill for certification with a publishing date. If you want to change the publishing date of your skill while the skill is in certification review, you must withdraw the skill from certification review, update the publishing date, and resubmit the skill for certification review.	`certified`
Live	The skill is published and available to users. You can't edit the configuration for live skills. To start development on an updated version, make your changes on the `development` version instead.	`live`
Hidden	The skill was previously published, but has been subsequently hidden. The skill is no longer available when users search or browse the Alexa Skills Store. Users who enabled the skill before it was hidden can continue to use the skill.	`live`
Removed	The skill was previously published, but has been subsequently removed. Users can't enable or use the skill.	—

You can re-submit a Hidden or Removed skill.

Revise and update your skill after certification

After Amazon certifies and publishes your skill to end users, the skill status changes to live. You can't change the configuration for a live skill. After certification, a new development version is automatically created in the developer console. This version has the same information as the original live version. You can use it to continue to work on your skill to improve the model and add features.

When you submit a skill while choosing to just certify the skill, you also have a development version that you can continue working on. To submit the development version for certification review, you must first publish or withdraw the certified version.

The live, certified, and development versions are displayed together in the list of skills.

You can work on the new version independently of the original. For instance, for a custom skill, you can add more intents and sample utterances to the interaction model. If you make code changes in your service, you should use a different endpoint or Lambda function to test those changes so you don't disrupt users that enable the live version.

When you submit a new version for certification or you already have a certified version, the versions remain in your skill list until the new version is published. After the new version is published, it becomes live and replaces the previous live version.

For a better user experience, maintain backward compatibility with the previous version of your skill. For example, if you add new intents, continue to support the previous intents that users ask for in your skill.

Warning: After a skill is published, you can't change the invocation name, even if you suppress the skill. To create a new invocation name, you must create a new skill with the new invocation name in the developer console. After you publish the new skill, remove the old version of the skill. For more details, see Hide or remove a skill.

Version your skill

Skill versioning captures a snapshot of your skill and each of its sub-resources when you submit the skill for certification. To help identify a skill version, you provide a version message with every submission of your skill. You can use this message, along with the submission time, to view version history and find the appropriate version.

The skill rollback feature depends on skill versioning. Tracking the versions of a skill allows you to accurately rollback to the appropriate snapshot.

To add an optional version message with the developer console

Sign in to the ASK developer console.
Select the Certification tab for the skill that's ready for review.
Select the Submission tab.
Select your Publishing preference:
- Certify and publish now. After the skill passes the certification review, Amazon starts the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store.
- Certify now and Publish Later. After the skill passes the certification review, the skill moves to a Certified status. You can then choose when to start the process of publishing the skill to the Alexa Skills Store.
Enter a version message in the Version message box.
Skill versioning on the Submission page
Click Submit for review.

You can also add a version message to your skill with the submit-skill-for-certification CLI command.

Was this page helpful?

Provide feedback

Last updated: Jul 15, 2024