Facebook Introduces Developer Alerts

In an effort to keep developers informed about critical events related to their applications, Facebook Thursday announced the launch of developer alerts via Facebook notifications and email for those listed as administrators or developers of apps.

The social network said in a post on its developer blog that alerts will be sent in the following instances:

If apps are using functionality that Facebook is altering or removing, alerts will be issued 90 days, 60 days, and 30 days prior to the changes taking effect, as well as on the day of the event.When the status of app submissions changes, such as when open graph actions are approved.Violations of Facebook’s platform policies and subsequent enforcement, such as relegating offending apps to sandbox mode.

Facebook offered more details in the blog post:

To help people easily manage and resolve issues with their apps, we thread alerts based on issue and date, and we include links when an action is required. Also, because there may be multiple developers listed on a single app, we send a confirmation notification when issues are resolved.

Most developers won’t receive alerts very frequently, but when you do, we hope you find them a helpful way to understand and track issues with your app. We’re beginning to roll this out to apps today and plan to enable it for all apps in the coming weeks. We welcome your feedback in the comments below.

Developers: Will these new alerts be helpful?