Adding app review reminder in Windows phone app without using rate my app toolkit

Reviews are key to your app achieving success.
High ratings in the Windows Phone Store encourage new users to download your app.
So there’s no harm in reminding your users to review your app.

 

I have just prepared a following code which can be useful to you and doesn’t require any toolkit or third party SDK.

So as to use it follow the certain steps given below

 

1. Add the following namespace given below in the MainPage.xaml.cs of the application or the Start page of the application.

  2. Add the following function in the MainPage.xaml.cs of your application.   For Windows 8/Windows 8.1 Silverlight  
For Windows 8.1(WinRT)/Universal app

The code is self-understandable. The only thing you need to do is to set the variable Appname in the code.

For Windows 8.1(WinRT) you need to add the App id also.

 

If you have any doubts you can refer to the following blog post.

http://www.windowsapptutorials.com/windows-phone/isolated-storage/isolated-storage-in-windows-phone-app-store-data-in-isolatedstoragesettings/

 

3. Now call the following function in the constructor of the MainPage.xaml.cs.

 


 

When the user will open the app 4 time the following message will be shown to user.

 


 

If the user click on OK button the Review Page of Application will be shown to user.

If the user rejects the message and clicks on cancel button the same message will be shown to user 7 time. If then also he rejects the option the same process will be repeated in an interval of number 10 as written in the code. Once the user has rated the application the following message will not been shown to user.

 

Important Note:
When you are testing the application in debug state an error message will be shown to you when you click on ok button as shown below.

 


 

Until your application has passed the submission to be included in the store this error message will be shown to you.

 

Note: You can configure the interval according to your need. You can change if condition given in the review function code and set the interval according to your need.

 


 

For example I want to display this message in the interval of 5. I can change the If condition to as shown below.

 


 

I hope this post will be helpful to you. You can download the full project file from the link given below.

Download project file reviewcode.zip

You can also use ratemyapp toolkit for getting feedbacks from the user. The link of the blogpost is given below.

Adding app review and feedback reminder in Windows Phone 8 app using ratemyapp toolkit

Launchers and choosers – Marketplace Tasks in Windows phone app

This is the fourth blog post of this series in which I am going to talk about different Marketplace tasks in Windows phone app.

In this post I shall be discussing about four different tasks

1. MarketplaceReviewTask

2. MarketplaceDetailTask

3. MarketplaceHubTask

4. MarketplaceSearchTask

 

1. First create a new project having the name Marketplacetasks.

 


 

2. Before going further add the following Namespace required for the above tasks in the MainPage.xaml.cs.

  MarketPlaceReview Task It is a quiet useful task and is of great importance. It launches the Windows Phone Marketplace client application which then displays the review page for your application. Create a button on the MainPage to launch the task. When we will click on this button it will take us to the review page of the application. The code for click event handler of this button is given below.  

 

MarketPlaceDetail Task

It launches the Windows Phone Marketplace client application and shows the details page for a product specified by the unique identifier you provide. Content identifier is the product ID from the manifest. You can set another external ID or if left empty, then it should use the current app product ID.

The default ContentType is ContentType.Applications so there is no need to change it if you’re bringing up your Application details page.

Suppose I want to add the link of my other application in my current app. I will set the content identifier to the product Id of the application which I want to add.

For example – Create a button on the MainPage to launch the task. Set the content identifier as specified. When we will click on the button it will open the Marketplace page of the application.

The code for click event handler of this button is given below.

    MarketPlaceSearch Task It launches the Windows Phone Marketplace client application which then shows the search results based on search terms you provide. Note that you can search by SearchTerms(keyword) and ContentType. For example I want to search for a specific app having the name Tilemaker I will set the search term to Tilemaker. Create a button on the MainPage to launch the task. The code for click event handler of this button is given below.  

 

MarketPlaceHub Task

It launches the Windows Phone Marketplace client application. Set the ContentType property to a value from the MarketplaceContentType enumeration in order to launch the hub to a particular type of content:

MarketplaceContentType.Music – music content

MarketplaceContentType.Applications – application content

To demonstrate it we shall create a button on the MainPage. When we will click on it the marketplace will get open on the phone.

The code for click event handler of this button is given below.



 

I hope this post will be helpful to you. You can download the full project source file from the link given below.

Download Full Project file MarketplaceTasks.zip