There’s something big that the Windows Dev Center does right: its API.
Almost every report you can view in the Dev Center is driven by the official API, and you can have access, too. The documentation is fresh. Uptime and speed are both decent. It’s unmetered, free, and secure.
But if you look around, you won’t see anyone chomping at the bit to make their own reporting dashboard out this API. And most of the Store developers I talk to are small shops that don’t have the server-side dev cycles they’d need to really make use of it.
So we’re unleashing this beautiful, neglected API. Ombudsman is a free, open-source (MIT) Zapier integration for the Microsoft Store Analytics API.
It lets you do cool stuff like this, with no coding required:
Ombudsman gives you access to all the aggregate data that the Store Analytics API provides, as well as a trigger whenever a new review is left for your app. Now you can track your sales, upgrades, ratings, and errors in whatever tool you like, as well as respond to new reviews as soon as possible. (You do respond to all of your reviews, right?)
If you want to use our deployment of Ombudsman, getting started takes about three minutes.
UPDATE: After almost two years, we’ve shut down the hosted version of Ombudsman. It’s still open-source, and we’re happy to help you deploy your own instance — reach out to us on Twitter. You can still use the User Camp Ombudsman Zapier app with your own instance of the Ombudsman Store API client.
- Get your User Camp API key. Complete the form on the Ombudsman homepage and we’ll email you a (free, no strings attached) API key.
- Create a new Azure Active Directory for your Windows Dev Center account, and an Azure Application to along with it. You can do this right from within the Dev Center, no Azure setup required. It’s annoying, but you only have to do it once.
- Add the Ombudsman Zapier app. Now you’re ready to get weird with your Store data.
That’s all there is to it. Build sales dashboards, create bug reports, populate your CRM from feedback, send your dev team a postcard with a 5-star review printed on it, or tweet the Insider team stacktraces whenever you get a crash that you think isn’t your fault*, all without writing a single line of code.
If you don’t like the idea of sending strangers an API key for your Microsoft Store account, grab the source code from GitHub and deploy it yourself (it’s a Django app that’s meant to be deployed on Heroku). Or contact us, and we can stop being strangers.
*Not recommended.
User Camp is the place for Microsoft Store developers. You should follow us on Twitter.
