Provisionee Certification Guide

• Requirements and Getting Started
• Device Details
• Packaging Details
• Timeline
• Certification Steps
• Derivative Certification
• Simplified Certification
• Test Plans
• Certification Tool

This guide explains the Frustration-Free certification process. The certification process does not replace your feature, security, or performance testing.

Requirements and Getting Started

Before you can begin the certification process, you must provide the following items:

• Two provisionee devices
  • Your device must have production-ready firmware already installed. Amazon will not update the firmware on your device.
• Mobile application for iOS or Android (Wi-Fi Simple Setup solutions only)
  • You must make a Bata or production-ready version of your application available for download by our certification team.
• Instruction and documentation
  • You must provide detail instructions on the use of your device and application.
• Product-packaging
  • You must provide production-packaging or appropriate physical production-packaging proofs with FFS-ready barcodes.
  • If you are submitting your device without proper barcode packaging, please get prior approval before shipping your device.

Amazon requires that you ensure the following before you ship your device:

• Your device is fully tested.
  • You must complete your own testing including QA, unit, integration, feature, and regression testing for your existing functionality. The certification process ensures compliance with FFS device and program requirements. (Please include any test harnesses required to pull logs from your device for lab testing.)
  • You must complete the Self-Certification tests and review the results with Amazon.
• You have enabled all required skills (not needed for ACK devices)
  • You must complete all tasks necessary to enable any skills needed during certification testing.
  • If needed, please setup a test account with before shipping your device.

Amazon notifies your company's primary contact when your device passes certification testing. Your device remains certified as long as your device remains in compliance with the certification standards set at the time of testing. If your device falls out of compliance, per program requirements, Amazon may disable your device from communicating with our FFS backend service. If your device fails certification testing, Amazon provides a list of failures. You can resubmit your device for certification testing after you have addressed the failures.

Device Details

Compliance with the FFS specification and implementation helps ensure a consistent and secure experience for our customers. Amazon requires that FFS-compatible devices are validated and certified. Exceptions to specific requirements may be possible, so ask your PoC for potential options.

• Amazon ensures that you have correctly implemented the full TLS security flow within the SDK by testing it against our Device Setup Service (DSS) and looking at the resulting connection details. Security is paramount and this is non-negotiable.
• If your integration requires an SDK, Amazon ensures that you have integrated with the SDK and have made no unauthorized changes to the SDK.
• Amazon ensures that your device only requests network credentials for SSIDs that it detects in the immediate vicinity. Requests for other SSIDs are not permitted.
• Amazon ensures that your implementation successfully provisions your device in 95% of testing attempts at a range of (at least) 30 feet between the provisionee and provisioner devices (including non-Amazon provisioners, if applicable). Amazon completes this testing across a representative blend of provisioner devices currently released. Amazon may also test your device against pre-release devices; however, this does not count as part of the 95% success requirement.
• Depending on your implementation, Amazon ensures that your mobile application supports Login with Amazon, including the FFS scope. Amazon ensures that all messaging to the customer for permission regarding FFS, and the explanation of why the customer needs to grant permission is clear. Amazon also ensures that your application does not obfuscate the Login with Amazon flow.
• Amazon ensures that, in the event that the FFS set up flow fails, your device's existing non-FFS set up flow starts up and attempts to set up the device for the customer.

Packaging Details

Amazon verifies that the device's packaging includes the required outer barcode mentioned in the manufacturing document with proper contrast. This verification ensures accurate barcode scanning during the order fulfillment process, which is necessary to properly pre-associate your device with the Amazon customer.

Timeline

• Amazon performs device certification testing after you have completed your self-certification and submitted it through the developer portal. Please allow 3 weeks in your product development process for Amazon’s certification testing (after submitting your certification results to the developer portal). This time frame is dependent on your product readiness and preparation prior to certification submission.
• Please reach out to your Amazon point of contact (PoC) for the latest information before certification planning. Due to the volume of testing, you are not permitted to submit the same device for certification more than three times in a 6 month period.

Certification Steps

1. Select and download the appropriate protocol specific certification test plan below
2. Self-certify your device
3. Log into the developer portal and request certification
4. The Amazon device certification will contact you to schedule certification for your device.
5. After certification is complete, follow the guide to configure ASIN(s) of your device for FFS

Without a certification confirmation from FFS, your devices will not connect to the FFS backend services in production.

Derivative Certification

After a device passes certification, you can certify it in other marketplaces, or a similar device in the same marketplace. This called Derivative Certification reduces the amount of required certification testing when you follow the certification steps above.

Not all devices qualify for a derivative certification. If your new device has a different model from a certified one considering hardware/chipset, major FW/SW version, and/or FFS protocol, it will NOT be treated as derivative; please follow the certification steps above and self-certify your device with all required test cases.

• Definition
  • Marketplace Derivative: A marketplace other than one where your device is already certified. For example: Your smart phone passed certification test in UK and you plan to launch it in Japan
  • Other Derivative: If your device has the same chipset, firmware, and protocol as a certified one and the main difference is either the form factor or added functionalities which are not related to networking like extended color, temperature, sensors, etc.
• Derivative process
  • Amazon recommends that you onboard a new Device Type for your derivative as a new product line, and in that case, you only need to self-certify test cases within "Barcode" Group (3P2-BC-01 to 3P2-BC-03) in the test plan before you request certification
  • For Marketplace Derivative, request certification without self-certification if there's no new Device Type created for it. Also, you may not need to ship your device for certification testing. Amazon will reach out to your primary contact for details.
  • For Other Derivative, You do not need to request certification if there's no new Device Type created for it.

Simplified Certification

If you are using the Alexa Connect Kit (ACK) or a certified reference design from Silicon Vendor or Solution Provider to develop your product, you may take advantage of a simplified process which does not require shipping your test devices to Amazon and a simplified version of test plan to save your time & effort on certification. Bluetooth Mesh or Zigbee Simple Setup certification is also a simplified certification now. Here are the simplified certification steps:

• Select and download the appropriate protocol specific and simplified version of test plan below
• Self-certify your device, make sure you use the latest test plan and include the information below in your test report
  • Test device barcodes' images and dimensions
  • Amazon customer id (from link)
  • Number of tests executed (not needed for ACK device)
  • Test start time and end time with time zone
  • Test device identifier (Zigbee MAC Address or BLE Mesh UUID, not needed for ACK device)
• Log into the developer portal and request certification
• Amazon will verify your test result for certification without requesting devices shipment if
  • You are self-certifying a Bluetooth Mesh device, a Zigbee device or an ACK device
  • AND you could complete the certification test within 7 days right before you submit the certification request.
• The simplified process support for Matter product and WSS over Wi-Fi product will be available soon.

Test Plans

The table below lists self-certification test plans for each FFS protocol. Please download the appropriate test plan for the protocol your device implements. While performing self-certification, please run each test case and indicate the pass/fail status in the following table. Amazon reviews test waivers on a case-by-case basis.

Certification Tool

For partners implementing the BSS or ZSS protocols, Amazon has open sourced a set of Python based automation scripts to control the Alexa App and help facilitate automated performance testing. These scripts help execute the self certification tests and shorten the product certification time. Support for other protocols will be made available in future updates.

Please view GitHub for the details.

Last updated: Nov 28, 2022