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Respond to reviews using Store services

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Important

The Microsoft Store reviews API, as documented in this topic, is currently not in a working state. Instead of using the APIs, you can achieve the same task(s) by using Partner Center.

Use the Microsoft Store reviews API to programmatically respond to reviews of your app in the Store. This API is especially useful for developers who want to bulk respond to many reviews without using Partner Center. This API uses Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to authenticate the calls from your app or service.

The following steps describe the end-to-end process:

  1. Make sure that you have completed all the prerequisites.
  2. Before you call a method in the Microsoft Store reviews API, obtain an Azure AD access token. After you obtain a token, you have 60 minutes to use this token in calls to the Microsoft Store reviews API before the token expires. After the token expires, you can generate a new token.
  3. Call the Microsoft Store reviews API.

Note

In addition to using the Microsoft Store reviews API to programmatically respond to reviews, you can alternatively respond to reviews using Partner Center.

Step 1: Complete prerequisites for using the Microsoft Store reviews API

Before you start writing code to call the Microsoft Store reviews API, make sure that you have completed the following prerequisites.

  • You (or your organization) must have an Azure AD directory and you must have Global administrator permission for the directory. If you already use Microsoft 365 or other business services from Microsoft, you already have Azure AD directory. Otherwise, you can create a new Azure AD in Partner Center for no additional charge.

  • You must associate an Azure AD application with your Partner Center account, retrieve the tenant ID and client ID for the application and generate a key. The Azure AD application represents the app or service from which you want to call the Microsoft Store reviews API. You need the tenant ID, client ID and key to obtain an Azure AD access token that you pass to the API.

    Note

    You only need to perform this task one time. After you have the tenant ID, client ID and key, you can reuse them any time you need to create a new Azure AD access token.

To associate an Azure AD application with your Partner Center account and retrieve the required values:

  1. In Partner Center, associate your organization's Partner Center account with your organization's Azure AD directory.

  2. Next, from the Users page in the Account settings section of Partner Center, add the Azure AD application that represents the app or service that you will use to respond to reviews. Make sure you assign this application the Manager role. If the application doesn't exist yet in your Azure AD directory, you can create a new Azure AD application in Partner Center.

  3. Return to the Users page, click the name of your Azure AD application to go to the application settings, and copy down the Tenant ID and Client ID values.

  4. Click Add new key. On the following screen, copy down the Key value. You won't be able to access this info again after you leave this page. For more information, see Manage keys for an Azure AD application.

Step 2: Obtain an Azure AD access token

Before you call any of the methods in the Microsoft Store reviews API, you must first obtain an Azure AD access token that you pass to the Authorization header of each method in the API. After you obtain an access token, you have 60 minutes to use it before it expires. After the token expires, you can refresh the token so you can continue to use it in further calls to the API.

To obtain the access token, follow the instructions in Service to Service Calls Using Client Credentials to send an HTTP POST to the https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant_id>/oauth2/token endpoint. Here is a sample request.

POST https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant_id>/oauth2/token HTTP/1.1
Host: login.microsoftonline.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8

grant_type=client_credentials
&client_id=<your_client_id>
&client_secret=<your_client_secret>
&resource=https://manage.devcenter.microsoft.com

For the tenant_id value in the POST URI and the client_id and client_secret parameters, specify the tenant ID, client ID and the key for your application that you retrieved from Partner Center in the previous section. For the resource parameter, you must specify https://manage.devcenter.microsoft.com.

After your access token expires, you can refresh it by following the instructions here.

Step 3: Call the Microsoft Store reviews API

After you have an Azure AD access token, you are ready to call the Microsoft Store reviews API. You must pass the access token to the Authorization header of each method.

The Microsoft Store reviews API contains several methods you can use to determine whether you are allowed to respond to a given review and to submit responses to one or more reviews. Follow this process to use this API:

  1. Get the IDs of the reviews you want to respond to. Review IDs are available in the response data of the get app reviews method in the Microsoft Store analytics API and in the offline download of the [Reviews report](/windows/apps/publish/reviews-report).
  2. Call the get response info for app reviews method to determine whether you are allowed to respond to the reviews. When a customer submits a review, they can choose not to receive responses to their review. You cannot respond to reviews submitted by customers who have chosen not to receive review responses.
  3. Call the submit responses to app reviews method to programmatically respond to the reviews.