Windows Store analytics API now available

Today Dev Center released the Windows Store analytics API, which provides analytics information for your Windows Store apps without requiring logging into Dev Center. Using a REST API you can retrieve the same information you see in Dev Center for app and in-app purchase acquisitions, ratings and reviews, as well as app health.  This new API provides quick access to reports without the time required to log into Dev Center, chose specific reports, and then download them. This can be especially useful if you would like to provide quick app information to marketing or finance, or run advanced analysis of data using your own tools (Excel, Power BI, etc.).

Most data can be pulled at the daily, weekly, or monthly level, and you can configure the API to retrieve only the information and date range you are interested in.

Below is a walkthrough of how to set up the API, an overview of the process to obtain specific analytics data, and a description of all the data that is now available through the API.

Initial setup to use the Windows Store analytics API

The Windows Store analytics API requires an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account that is associated with your Dev Center account.  If you do not currently have an Azure AD connected to your Dev Center account, please refer to the Using Multi-user and roles blog or MSDN documentation on how to set one up.  You will set up the app or service from which you want to call the Windows Store analytics API as an Azure AD application.  After you obtain an access token from Azure AD, you can then call the Windows Store analytics API from your app or service.

To obtain an Azure AD access token:

1. Associate an Azure AD application with your Dev Center account.
   • Under Manage users in Account settings in Dev Center, click Add Azure AD applications. If the application already exists in your Azure AD, select it. If not, click New Azure AD application and enter the required field values.

• Reply URL: Enter the Reply URL for the new Azure AD application. This is the URL where users can sign in and use your Azure AD application (sometimes also known as the App URL or Sign-On URL). To find the application’s reply URL, in the Azure Management Portal, click Active Directory, click the directory, and then click the application, and then click Configure. The Reply URL field is in the Single Sign-on section of the Configure page.
• App ID URI: enter a URL in this format: https://YOURTENANTNAME.onmicrosoft.com/YOURAPPNAME
  1. YOURTENANTNAME should be your organization’s tenant name in Azure AD
  2. YOURAPPNAME should be the name of the app you would like to pull data for with the API
• In the Roles section, select Manager, then save.

• Return to the Manage users page, select the Azure AD application you just created, and click Add new key.
• Copy the Client ID and Key provided, as you will not be able to access this information again. You will need both of these in order to obtain the Azure AD token to use when calling the analytics API.

2. Obtain an Azure AD access token by sending a service-to-service access token request to the following Azure AD endpoint: https://login.microsoftonline.com//oauth2/token.
   • To find the tenant ID, log in to the Azure Management Portal, navigate to Active Directory, and select the directory linked to your Dev Center account. The tenant ID is embedded in the URL for this page, as shown by the your_tenant_ID string example: https://manage.windowsazure.com/@#workspaces/ActiveDirectoryExtension/Directory/<your_tenant_ID>/direcotryQuickStart
   • The client_id and client_secret parameters are the Client ID and Key values that you copied in step 1.d.
   • The resource parameter is: https://manage.devcenter.microsoft.com

3. Call the Windows Store analytics API.
   • Set your call code parameters and pass the access token to the Authorization header.
   • Required parameters for each request include the app or IAP ID.
   • You can specify the date range and the number of rows you would like returned, as well as choose additional filters based on the data you would like to see.
   • Data is returned in JSON format.

Data available with the Windows Store analytics API

Once you have completed the API setup and obtained an access token, use the REST call to obtain the specific data you need from your apps. Read the documentation for each of the data sources for additional information on how to set the parameters as well as to view examples of data that is returned by each call:

1. App Acquisitions: Aggregate acquisition data for an app by day, week, or month including type, age group, gender, market, OS version, and Store client.
2. IAP Acquisitions: Aggregate acquisition data for all IAPs in an app or a specific IAP by day, week, or month including type, age group, gender, market, OS version, and Store client.
3. Ratings: Ratings data for an app by day, week, or month including market, OS version, device type, and if the rating is new or revised.
4. Reviews: Review data for an app including market, OS version, package version, device details, if the review is new or revised, the review title, text, and author, helpful/not helpful votes, and the date and text of any responses.
5. App Health: App failure data for an app by day including name, hash, symbol, market, OS version, event type, device type, package name and version, hit count and machine count.

Feedback

As you use the Windows Store analytics API please let us know your feedback and experience through the “Feedback” button in Dev Center (found in the bottom right of the dashboard) or with the Windows Platform UserVoice for Dev Center.  Your feedback will help us continue to evolve this API.