Facebook has had an App Review process for a few years. While it's been a little tedious to explain why you want specific permissions, it has also generally been smooth sailing. Submit a request, get approval within a few days (or even hours). Done.
That all changed with the Facebook privacy issues earlier this year. Now, they dig deeper and, because of a large queue of submissions, take much, much longer. JFBConnect has been updated to help with the approval process and to improve your chances of getting approved the first time.
The App Review process is Facebook's process to let you, the administrator of a site, describe why you need to obtain additional information about the user registering on your site. By default, you can get the user's email address, name and a few other basic details. To get any additional information, like their hometown or current location, their status updates, or even a link to their Facebook profile, you'll need to go through the App Review Process.
The most common reasons JFBConnect will import this data is if you've configured a 3rd party extension, like EasySocial, JomSocial or even the Joomla - User profile plugin to import this information automatically into the user's profile.
In JFBConnect v8.0.1, we've created a new Scope Review section. This section lists out all of the scopes that JFBConnect has been configured to request from users and why those scopes are being requested. With these details, you can get a quick glance of what scope you need to submit for review, or investigate if there are scopes being requested unnecessarily.
The App Review process itself can seem daunting, but armed with the details of what scope your site is requesting and where it's being requested from makes things a lot easier. For instance, if the Scope Review sections shows that you're requesting the "user_link" scope in the "Profiles" section, it's a lot more clear what to focus on when taking pictures or describing how your app will use that scope from the user.
For very detailed instructions of the App Review process, we've put together an extensive Facebook App Review guide. We will update it continuously as the App Review process evolves and based on feedback from our users on issues they encounter. We're working very hard to make the App Review process as easy as possible and will upgrade and improve JFBConnect however necessary to accomplish that goal.
