Private Chrome extension spends 2 days in review

[David Cohen]

We have a Chrome extension that we develop. We have three versions of this plug-in – dev, QA, and production. The dev and QA versions are published to testers only. These are our development versions, and we sometimes publish multiple versions in the same day as bug fixes or features are released. There should be minimal review required, as these are private plug-ins.

It used to be that new versions of dev and qa were published within a few minutes of being uploaded. Recently, however, it has begun to take upwards of 2 days to publish these new versions (they are stuck in pending review). Because they are development versions and we are releasing fixes all the time, this is unworkable.

Has anybody else encountered this? How can we restore the < 5 minute publish times that we used to have?

[Artem Harutyunyan]

I would like to second this ask. Would really appreciate some pointers on what we (the developers) can do to help speed the review process up specifically for versions that are private and are aimed and testing and development.

Artem.

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[David Cohen]

I submitted a ticket about my private development extension being stuck in review. This is the response I received:

"I understand that it took awhile for the review to be completed and approved. Please note that both new item submissions as well as updates to existing items (*including unlisted/private) are subject to automated system checks and may be flagged for manual review. For the reason of being flagged to the additional compliance review is not shareable with you due to security purposes. Please also note that you cannot modify/update your item or cancel the review while it is in progress. 

Review times vary; some reviews complete in a few hours, others take many days, and in some cases a review can take several weeks, depending on review complexity of each item. However, to ensure that this issue doesn't happen again, please make as much of your code visible in the package as you can. If some of your app's logic is hidden and it appears to be suspicious, it may trigger the manual review. 

This documentation will be helpful to get an understanding on what items our review team considers for manual review.

Lastly, I’d like to inform you about impending changes to the Chrome Web Store as a result of the COVID-19 situation. Given adjusted work schedules due to these unprecedented times, there may be some temporary limitations and delays in support.

I understand that these changes may cause inconvenience, and I apologize for any interruption of service. Thank you for your support during this challenging time and for your participation in the Chrome extension ecosystem."

While I understand Google's rationale, I would hope that they introduce a policy allowing for more lenient testing for development only private applications. Even if we have to go through some sort of an approval process for our private development versions, anything that would help streamlining publication for our QA teams would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[wOxxOm]

Try setting up your own private extension store via some administrative policies. I don't have any info about that but it hopefully it's available online so you will be able to find it.

[Simeon Vincent]

Hey all,

I want to quickly check in here to say that this is a use case I've heard discussed and am personally excited to see us better support. Unfortunately, we've got a lot of other things going on behind the scenes.

As wOxxOm suggested, I think Self hosting your extension and management appointment via enterprise policies is your best bet in the short term. At the moment I believe the Managing Extensions in Your Enterprise white paper put together by the Chrome Enterprise team is your single best resource here. You'll most likely want to jump straight to the section titled "Create your own on-premises web store".

Cheers,

Simeon - @dotproto

Chrome Extensions Developer Advocate

[bar...@ai21.com]

Simeon - are you sure this is up-to-date. In page 21 it suggests dragging a CRX file into the extensions window. 

According to this link (https://developer.chrome.com/apps/external_extensions) Windows and Mac installs are required to come from the Chrome Web Store.

This seems conflicting to me. Can you please elaborate on the solution?

Thanks,

Barak

[Deco]

Hey there, CRX (packaged Chrome extensions) do not have this limitation on the developer and Canary builds of Chrome.

You can also load in the files in an unpackaged format, if that doesn't work.

Thanks,

Deco

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/c04f8f1a-ef68-4483-b74c-47430d8a4c90n%40chromium.org.

[Barak Peleg]

As I would like to test the extension as close as possible to our users' environment, using Chrome canary/developer seems wrong.

Thanks for the quick reply,

Barak

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Barak Peleg

VP Engineering, AI21 Labs

[Deco]

If you would like to remain in the stable branch of Chrome, then the following documentation should allow you to setup the external location correctly: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/external_extensions

Thanks,

Deco

[Deco]

Sorry for this second chain, you will be able to replicate this using the unpackaged format with the JSON update script - the one linked by Simeon is indeed used for updating static PGP CRX files.

Thanks,

Deco

On Sat, 5 Sep 2020, 12:56 Barak Peleg, <bar...@ai21.com> wrote:

[Joseph Flood]

Hi Simeon,

I noticed you've suggested using Chrome Enterprise in a few related threads. Would you be able to look into my question here https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/Qfjs8RmUfYs

I'm finding that the documentation is not living up to it's promises.

Cheers,

Joe