Longer Review Times for Private Apps in Managed Google Play

[petterfoo]

Over the past month, we’ve noticed a significant increase in the review times for our apps that are permanently private under Managed Google Play. Previously, review times for both closed tracks and production were almost instantaneous. However, we’re now seeing delays ranging from 20 minutes to over an hour.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues? Is there any known way to revert to the shorter review times we had before?

It’s possible that this change coincides with our recent verification of developer accounts to meet the new requirements, but we’re unsure if that’s related.

[jasonbayton]

I see them hovering generally around 10 mins, which has been pretty consistent for as long as I can remember. Webapps are a little faster but not by much. 

That said, @Lizzie are you aware of anything internally to cause this?

[petterfoo]

For the permanently private apps we have had no review times at all since permanently private apps was enabled in the play console early 2021.
I have checked with some other app teams in our organisation and the experience the same thing.

We use a developer account per team and publish to our organisation(WS1 EMM), we don't use the iframe for apps.

[jasonbayton]

The thing is they do get reviewed for some very basic security checks, so if checks are generally increasing, which could be architectural as well as process/procedural, it'll affect everyone. @Lizzie ?

[BenMcc]

Review times are generally up around this time of the year as more apps have been updated to comply with the Target API level policy. While this doesn't specifically include managed apps they will still get caught up in the review process. Again this won't apply to everyone - most people will still see a few hours review time but some that caught up in random checks etc may see a lot longer than normal. We have seen some take a month or more (but that is very few and far between)

Ben

[petterfoo]

Reply to BenMcc:
We have not experienced this for permanently private apps at all before since they where added in 2021.
Now it is consistantly longer review times over multiple apps and multiple teams.

[jasonbayton]

I'm pretty consistently seeing 15+ minute time-to-available on updates and new uploads. To echo what I fed back privately: 

Updates you can get away with, it's not ideal if a managed config payload changes but for the most part it's not massively impactful since updates don't hit devices the very second they complete uploading.

For adding that app in the first instance though is adding 15+ minutes to an open, pending policy that admins can't continue with their day on until it's available. If this is going to be the norm, Goog should make select available during upload as you should have the package name pretty immediately.. and do the rest in the background.

Data: I added a new app 11:03, it's 11:30 and still not available 👀

[Flo]

We are experiencing the same behaviour on our side

[Lizzie]

Thanks everyone, I'm sorry this is taking longer than expected. I'm am continuing to look into this. Once I find something useful to update you on, I'll come back. 👍 Please do continue to highlight if anything changes on your end. 

Thanks again. 

Lizzie

[petterfoo]

Also notices another related change, when creating a new app in playstore, I now had to fill in a form to support to make it permanently private.
I seem to remember this also beeing the case before 2021.

[jasonbayton]

That seems like a bug that comes and goes. FYI if you refresh the page a few times it goes away (at least for the last few of mine it has)

[jasonbayton]

Any news @Lizzie ?

[Lizzie]

Hello @petterfoo, @jasonbayton, @Flo, @BenMcc,

I hope you are all having a good week. I'm sorry it has taken me a little while to get a useful update. 

Good news! We have a ticket open and a potential fix has be identified, but our engineers are currently investigating. I'll keep you posted as I have more updates, but I wanted to come back to you to say it is being looked into. 😀

Thanks again, speak soon.

Lizzie

[Lizzie · Accepted solution]

Hello @petterfoo, @jasonbayton, @Flo, @BenMcc,

Happy Friday! Hope you've had a good week. 

I have an update on this, the potential fix has been implemented now. 🎉 Would you mind checking the next time you send a private apps for approval whether this has improved and let me know please?

Thanks so much for your help and have a great weekend. 

Lizzie

[jasonbayton]

Hey Lizzie! 

It's back down to about 8 minutes for me. Not lightning fast but significantly better than what I was seeing previously. Do we get to know RCA or ..? 😄 

[petterfoo]

I have tested a couple of releases now and they are published without any delays.
Thanks for the fix!
I have not tested creating a new app, but Jasons workaround worked fine the last time.

[Lizzie]

Great to hear @jasonbayton and @petterfoo. Thanks for confirming this is back to a healthy amount of time.

I'm afraid I don't think I will get a RCA on this one Jason (even though if it were up to me I'd been keen to make it into a Steven Spielberg movie trilogy, you never know...! 😀)

Thanks again for all your help spotting this and getting it resolved. 👏

Speak to you soon.

Lizzie