Today, Alexa Developers can access more insights and manage the status of their publication status, allowing for tighter skill control and better planning. You can now find estimations on when your skill’s certification results will be provided, a history of certification updates, and a list of countries where your live skills are available. This information is also accessible through the Skill Management API (SMAPI). With this information, you can plan for when your certification results should be available and prepare accordingly

View Certification Time Estimates

In this new update to the Alexa Developer Console, you can access additional information about your skill in the Submission tab of the Certification page.

When you submit a skill, you’ll find an estimated time for when your certification review results will be available. You may find that this timeline is different for the different skills that you submit. This estimate is based on how complex your skill is and where it will be available for customers, among other factors.

You can now also see a table with Certification Updates to document your skill’s certification history. The history column consists of four types of updates:

• In-review – the skill was submitted and is in certification review
• Certified – the skill passed certification review
• Failed review – the skill failed certification review
• Withdrawn – the skill was withdrawn from certification review

Each update has a timestamp and a note to provide additional information. For example, the “in-review” update has a note containing the estimated time for when certification review results should be available.

Know Where Your Skill Has Been Certified

We now provide a list of countries in which your skills are available. You can find this information in the Submission tab of the  Certification page or via SMAPI. You will also be able to see the countries where your skill has been restricted, since some skills that have passed certification review may not be available in all countries. For more information, see Content Ratings. It is important to remember that your skill will only display in the Alexa Skills Store if it contains the locale requirements for that store. For example, a skill may be marked available in all countries, but if it only supports en-US, it will only display in the US Alexa Skills Store.

Learn more about what new information is available in our documentation about publication in the developer console and SMAPI.

Have More Control Over Publication Status on the Developer Console and SMAPI

You can now suppress live skills through the developer console and SMAPI. This enables you to Hide or Remove your skill from the Alexa Skills Store if you no longer want it to be available for either new customers or existing customers. 

Hiding a skill keeps it active for customers who have previously enabled it. The skill will no longer be available when customers search for it in the Alexa Skills Store. Removing a skill disables it for all customers, including those who have previously enabled it. Customers will not be able to use or enable the skill, and the skill will no longer be available when customers search for it in the Alexa Skills Store. For additional information on publication statuses, please visit our documentation.

We only recommend you remove a skill when it provides a broken experience to customers that you cannot correct. Even if you remove a skill, we recommend that you still provide a mechanism to answer any questions from your existing customers. If you have questions about maintaining your skill or need advice on upkeep, please contact us.

Hiding or removing a skill applies to all locales. If a live skill is hidden or removed, you can still access it in the developer console alongside an in-development version, which you can continue working on. If you want to re-publish the skill, you can submit any in-development version of the skill for certification.

To suppress your skill, log in to the developer console and find the existing “Live” version of the skill that you want to hide or remove. In the actions column, click Hide or Remove, and select a reason for suppression. Sometimes, the request may take up to a few days to complete.  Visit our documentation for more general information on hiding or removing a skill on the developer console and SMAPI.