In May while trying to get Cineworld app into Nokia Collections, I was asked to up the ratings – it had about 143 3.5* ratings. Nokia contact gave me a feedback helper control that I plugged in and bang.. 100 reviews a week and today it stands at 1800+

the app still hasn’t made it to Nokia Collections but I has earned me some XP from DVLUP.

So what does the feedback helper do ? well it prompts the user to rate the app. Some times a user would have already rated the app and prompting them – ends up pissing them off. some down rate the app, others down rate and email me about it.

A while back I noticed that if you went to review an app that you had already reviewed, the app store would show you previous review and allow you to modify it. Encouraged by Pedro Lamas use of fiddler to detect updates, I fired up fiddler and gave it a whirls.. here are the findings.

GET https://marketplaceedgeservice.windowsphone.com/v8/ratings/product/9b255dee-4682-49d8-88bc-d568e40f84bc/user/reviews?os=8.0.10328.0&cc=GB&lang=en-GB&hw=520170499&dm=RM-821_eu_euro1_425 HTTP/1.1 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: application/xml Accept: */* Accept-Encoding: gzip Authorization: WLID1.0 t=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&p= User-Agent: ZDM/4.0; Windows Mobile 8.0 X-WP-Client-Config-Version: 107 X-WP-MO-Config-Version: 803 X-WP-Device-ID: A7DF71A4B57D13FB1B904CAA83FE02B63B8EF2457E02A2166C0686D22C200000 X-WP-ANID: A=264684E3878630980823C9A1FFFF0000&E=ea9&W=1 Host: marketplaceedgeservice.windowsphone.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: private Content-Type: application/atom+xml Vary: Accept-Encoding X-WP-Activity-ID: f97aa71b-03d9-4d58-ad6d-23ed6d351096 X-WP-Served-By: MarketplaceEdge_IN_2.EUNO.Pod1.9.0.13266.1 X-WP-Latest-Client-Config-Version: 107 Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 22:16:22 GMT Content-Length: 905 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><a:entry xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns="http://schemas.zune.net/catalog/music/2007/10"><a:link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="/v8/ratings/product/9b255dee-4682-49d8-88bc-d568e40f84bc/user/reviews" /><a:updated>2013-01-12T15:53:31.097000Z</a:updated><a:author><a:name>Hermit</a:name></a:author><a:id>tag: marketplaceedge.windowsphone.com,2013-10-13:/v8/ratings/product/9b255dee-4682-49d8-88bc-d568e40f84bc/user/reviews</a:id><a:content type="html">Hi this is the developer of this app. Just wanted to apologize for issues over the last few versions. Please email me if you still have issues</a:content><userRating>8</userRating><device>RM-821_eu_euro1_276</device><productVersion>8.0</productVersion><hidden>false</hidden><reviewId>3ba388e8-925a-4326-8329-1e365dc7df5e</reviewId></a:entry>

The findings show that there is a GET method that requires authorisation code and device id / ANID in the http headers.

The response is the user review with the ratings

Update: I was asked to check if the rating / review submitted by user makes it to device. I have tested it with another app and yes the device gets the review after a bit (not immediate.. few mins at least). This means that ANID has a easy way of translating to user identifiable live id 🙂 but we already knew that 🙂