Here in the Office Store, we’re eager to ensure that we’re providing our customers with compelling, usable add-ins.  In December, we revamped the Office Store policies and guidance to set a higher user-experience bar for add-ins in the Store.  

Starting in March, we will switch to heavily promote those add-ins with high user ratings and wide usage.  Newer add-ins (which have not yet had a chance to be widely used) will be promoted based on (1) the richest functionality for users and (2) a great user experience.  Great add-ins will be promoted on homepages and will appear much more often on the first page of search results.  This promotion will lead to these add-ins being downloaded much more than others in the Store.  All existing add-ins in the Store are being re-evaluated against these new criteria, not just new submissions – and the effects of this will be seen across our storefront pages very soon as our storefront will be populated with the very best add-ins meeting the latest Office Store criteria.  Add-ins which do not meet the criteria will fall off the homepage.

We’ve also added a page on the top tips for improving your add-in ranking, and reducing submission rejection.  We’ll follow up very soon with a blog on adding richer functionality (which will include top tips for Outlook add-ins).

Office Extensibility Team