I finally got my app update through App Review without any changes to the update.TLDR: After months of communicating with my app reviewer as well as with a sympathetic tech support representative, they eventually approved my update without any apparent fixes to the ODR backend.On Monday June 1, I submitted the same build for review again, and it was rejected the same day. I replied to App Review via the "Resolution Center" that I intended to follow the instructions from tech support (see my post above) and to submit the build everyday until the issue with their backend was resolved. I then received a completely infuriating response: "We appreciate your efforts to comply with the App Store Review Guidelines, and we look forward to reviewing your resubmitted app." I replied, expressing my frustration with the seemingly canned, robotic responses and pointing out that this issue had nothing to my "complying with the App Store Review Guidelines." They responded by setting up another phone call "within 3 to 5 business days." The reviewer (same that I had spoken to in late April) called me on Friday June 5 and explained that he had no visibility into Rich's progress on the issue and promised to track down engineering and follow up on my bug report and tech support incident. On Monday June 8, I received the first response to my Feedback Assistant bug report: another completely infuriating, inhuman instruction "Once the issue has been reproduced please trigger a sysdiagnose after the problem occurs and attach the log file to Feedback Assistant." I replied to that message, as well as to my app reviewer via "Resolution Center" and the tech support incident email thread, that there was no way for me to reproduce the error -- in fact, this was at the heart of the entire issue! A few hours later I got a call from the same app reviewer: he said this was extremely unusual but they were going to approve my app update without a fix! He offered an apology for my trouble but didn't explain what the underlying issue was. My update indeed went through and is now live with the ODR requests working as expected.My only suggestion is to be persistent with complaints to App Review and to Developer Technical Support until they either fix their backend problems or approve your app update as is. It may be helpful to reference my reports:Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668
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I finally got my app update through App Review without any changes to the update.TLDR: After months of communicating with my app reviewer as well as with a sympathetic tech support representative, they eventually approved my update without any apparent fixes to the ODR backend.After receiving only non-responses from tech support (see posts on this thread), I asked again for an update on May 20, explaining that nothing had progressed in 2 months. It was serendipitous timing: the tech support representative I was communicating with was out of town and another rep, Rich, answered my email saying he had reproduced the error and showed me console logs to try to diagnose the issue. We had a few relatively quick exchanges while we tried to debug -- it was so refreshing to work with someone behaving like a human! Importantly, Rich provided a console log for me to attach to my Feedback Assistant bug report and said he "managed to get the ODR engineer set up with the App Review Network administrator to provide the info needed to investigate this issue." He then suggested that I "resubmit the app after each rejection so that the app is reviewed daily" since he had no way to know when the issue was resolved. On Monday June 1, I submitted the same build for review again, and it was rejected the same day. I replied to App Review via the "Resolution Center" that I intended to follow the instructions from tech support and to submit the build everyday until the issue with their backend was resolved. I then received a completely infuriating response: "We appreciate your efforts to comply with the App Store Review Guidelines, and we look forward to reviewing your resubmitted app." I replied, expressing my frustration with the seemingly canned, robotic responses and pointing out that this issue had nothing to my "complying with the App Store Review Guidelines." They responded by setting up another phone call "within 3 to 5 business days." The reviewer (same that I had spoken to in late April) called me on Friday June 5 and explained that he had no visibility into Rich's progress on the issue and promised to track down engineering and follow up on my bug report and tech support incident. On Monday June 8, I received the first response to my Feedback Assistant bug report: another completely infuriating, inhuman instruction "Once the issue has been reproduced please trigger a sysdiagnose after the problem occurs and attach the log file to Feedback Assistant." I replied to that message, as well as to my app reviewer via "Resolution Center" and the tech support incident email thread, that there was no way for me to reproduce the error -- in fact, this was at the heart of the entire issue! A few hours later I got a call from the same app reviewer: he said this was extremely unusual but they were going to approve my app update without a fix! He offered an apology for my trouble but didn't explain what the underlying issue was. My update indeed went through and is now live with the ODR requests working as expected.My only suggestion is to be persistent with complaints to App Review and to Developer Technical Support until they either fix their backend problems or approve your app update as is. It may be helpful to reference my reports:Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668
I've been in touch with Rich Kubota who is working to get to the bottom of the ODR request issue. He was able to reproduce the error with my app and capture device logs to help the ODR engineers track down the issue. To be clear, the error that's being returned by a request for any ODR: "Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4994 "The requested application data doesn’t exist." UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x281b6a730 {Error Domain=_NSBundleResourceRequestErrorDomain Code=100 "No manfiest found for bundle ID com.xxxxxx" UserInfo={NSLocalizedFailureReason=No manfiest found for bundle ID com.xxxxxx}}}" (where "com.xxxxxx is the bundle ID of my app) (and note the typo "manfiest" 😐) Again, ODR works for me in TestFlight and every other configuration I'm able to try, only fails in App Review.I received this message from Rich last Friday 5/29: "I finally managed to get the ODR engineer set up with the App Review Network administrator to provide the info needed to investigate this issue. It’s unfortunate that this is taking so long but is it. Now that the OR folks are discussing the issue with App Review, a solution should be on it’s way. However, I have no timetable to provide. I don’t have access to the bug report, but I would resubmit the app after each rejection so that the app is reviewed daily. I’m not in the bug report chain so I can’t tell you when the issue is resolved."I resubmitted today and my app was again rejected after the reviewer saw the same error. My plan is now to resubmit my app everyday until the issue is resolved. I'll post here if I hear anything new.
I received a response on May 21 from a technical support representative who was able to reproduce the error the App Reviewers are seeing and produce a console log. The error was reproduced on a cellular connection so I believe that rules out issues involving reviewers connecting via VPN. He said he has passed the information on to the ODR engineers who hopefully can use the logs to find the issue on their backend. I followed up today and sent him a link to this thread and enumerated all the Feedback Assistant reports and developer TSI cases that everyone has filed with the hope that the issue can be escalated. I'll report back if I hear anything more from them.
Same for me. No response at all from App Review or Developer Technical Support. I will post here if I hear anything.
Can you post your Technical Support Incident Case ID? I will reply to my case with yours so they can see that this issue is widespread.Here are the ones I've filed:Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668Here's another thread of several of us that are experiencing the same issues: https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/413854
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No update. I asked for an update on my Technical Support Incident on May 1, and received this reply today: "I do not have an update for you at this time. As soon as I have new information for you from our APP Review and Engineering teams, I will reach back asap and update you."This situation is very frustrating.
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I talked to a representative from App Review last Friday and they seemed to have gotten Developer Tech Support to look at my filed incident, as I got an email on Monday: "I’m still working with our ODR engineering and App Review teams to help figure out the cause of this issue. I will let you know ASAP when I have new information for you." I'll post again if I hear anything more from them.
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I managed to talk to a representative from App Review on the phone today. He said he believed there was no issue with the backend but was going to follow-up with my Technical Support Incident (732675555) and try to get an answer from the engineers. He said he or technical support would get back to me soon. Fingers crossed...
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Others are seeing this same problem: https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/416659Same exact thing happening to me. All my testing works fine but the resources are throwing an error when App Review tries to access them. My update only had very minor UI changes. I also have several resources with "Initial Install Tags" (so should be installed when the app is very installed) and it's obvious from the screenshots that these are also not loading for App Review.I submitted an issue to Developer Technical Support on April 1, got a response on April 7 asking me to submit a bug report via Feeback Assistant, I did that immediately and haven't heard back since. I followed up April 14 and have not gotten a response.I finally spoke on the phone to a representative at App Review today (April 24) and he said he believed there was no problem with the back-end, but would try to follow up with my technical support case and get back to me.Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668Because these issues started around the time work-from-orders were put in place, I believe the issue stems from a change to how App Review is connecting to the back-end. I also see VPN status in their screenshots.Mark
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No! I have a call scheduled with App Review and will try to get to the bottom of it. Please let me know if you learn anything.
Several of us are seeing the same thing. https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/413854I feel the likely culprit is a change in how App Review connects to the production servers due to new remote working conditions.Hopefully someone from Apple could help us with this! Meanwhile our app updates sit in limbo...Mark
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Same exact thing happening to me. All my testing works fine but the resources are throwing the same error when App Review tries. My update only had very minor UI changes. I also have several resources with "Initial Install Tags" (so should be installed when the app is very installed) and it's obvious from the screenshots that these are also not loading for App Review.I submitted an issue to Developer Technical Support on April 1, got a response on April 7 asking me to submit a bug report via Feeback Assistant, I did that immediately and haven't heard back since. I followed up 3 days ago (April 14) and have not gotten a response.Developer Technical Support Incident Case ID: 732675555Feedback Assistant bug report ID: FB7655668I agree with jonathan239 that it must be a change in the way App Review is connecting to the back-end. I also see VPN status in their screenshots.Currently, I'm at a loss for how to proceed. Please respond if you figure anything out.Mark
