Any Facebook developer will tell you that that platform moves pretty quickly. The team at Facebook is constantly improving and iterating the platform, and that may introduce some breaking changes into apps. Developers need to keep on top of these changes, but it’s not exactly convenient in the current set up.

Facebook has heard the plight of the developer, and has decided to bring the updates to them. The social network calls it Developer Alerts, and it intends to inform developers when something goes wrong with their app, or when action is required over a breaking change.

So what kind of information can developers expect to receive in these alerts. Facebook lays out in a blog post:

Breaking changes. If your app is using functionality that we’re changing or removing, you will be sent an alert at least 90 days before the change goes into effect. As a courtesy, we’ll also send reminders at 60, 30 and 0 days. Once you’ve enabled the respective migration, we will no longer send you alerts.

App status changes. If you have submitted Open Graph actions or created an app detail page for App Center, we will use Developer Alerts to notify you when the status of your submission changes. For example, we will send an alert when your Open Graph actions are approved.

Policy violations and enforcement. If your app doesn’t adhere to our Platform Policies you will be notified through these alerts. For example, if your app does not list a privacy policy, you will receive an alert telling you to add one before your app is forced into sandbox mode.

You can expect Developer Alerts to look a little something like this:

As you can see, the Developer Alerts are very clear on what actions developers should take with their apps. Facebook is also nice enough to include links when action is required on the part of the developer. To prevent confusion on apps with more than one developer, Facebook will also send out notifications to all team members when an issue is resolved.

On a final note, Developer Alerts will begin rolling out in some apps today, and continue to roll out to all apps over the coming weeks. With that being said, Facebook will not be spamming developers with notifications. Developers would be wise to keep on top of changes themselves so that they don’t have to receive an alert telling them something is wrong.