TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Prerequisites
  • Ticket field setup
  • Automation Settings
• App Setup
  • Step - 1 (Account Setup)
  • Step - 2 (Freshdesk Setup)
  • Step - 3 (Playstore Setup)
• Limitation
• Installation video (YouTube)

Prerequisites

Ticket field setup

• Login to your Freshdesk account
• Goto Admin > Workflows > Ticket Fields.
• Create a custom Ticket field of type Dropdown with label review_type and add Playstore as an option.
• Create a custom Ticket field of type Single line text with label reviewid.
• Click the Save field.

⚠️ Note: The option for the Dropdown field review_type is case sensitive. So, make sure you're adding option as mentioned above.

Ticket field review_type is shared by the other application like Google My Business & Youtube - Freshdesk for Mint. So, if you've already created the field, just add the above option Playstore.

Automation Settings

An automation rule needs to be created to process the ticket reply and add it to Playstore. Please follow the below steps.

• Goto Admin > Workflows > Automations > Ticket Updates 

• Click on New Rule

• Complete the setup as shown in the image below

• Callback URL: https://fdplaystore.spritle.com/api/addreply

• In the section On tickets with these properties, select - In Tickets > if review_type > Is > Playstore.
• Check Require authentication and select I have API key. Provide your Freshdesk API key in the API Key field.

• Select the below fields in the Content 

  1. Ticket ID

  2. Subject

  3. Description

  4. Last public comment

  5. Last private comment
  6. Group name
  7. Agent Name 
  8. Agent email
  9. review_type
  10. reviewid
  11. Triggered Event

• Click SAVE

App Setup

Step - 1 (Account Setup)

• Navigate to https://fdplaystore.spritle.com.

• Create a Playstore Integration account. If already created, log in with the same account.

Step - 2 (Freshdesk Setup)

• Provide your Freshdesk Subdomain and API Key.

⚠️ Please note that the API key provided here should match the one provided in the Automation rule. If it is different, the reply will not be added to the review.

• Please enter the default values for the mandatory fields (if any). These values will be applied to the ticket created by the application.
• And, click Save.

Step - 3 (Playstore Setup)

• Follow the instructions from this link to get the JSON file https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/getting_started
  
• Navigate to the Google Cloud Console and search for IAM & Admin. Within this section, you can locate the service account tab.
• Create a new Service Account by following the steps provided in the link.

• While creating a service account please select the role of Owner in Service account permissions.

• Once the Service account is created, click ADD KEY > Create a new key under the KEYS section.

• Select the JSON option and click CREATE.

• A JSON file will be downloaded, Use this file in the next step
• Now in the Google Play Console, Under Users and permissions click Invite new users and add your service account email which you created recently under Account permissions as shown in the image below.

• Once the service account email is added, click to manage the permissions to fetch and reply to the reviews.
• In the App permissions section kindly select your app.
• Then navigate to the Account permissions and allow two accesses.
• Within App access select the View app information and download bulk reports (read-only)
  
  
  

• Within User feedback select Reply to reviews.
  
  
  
• Now switch to the Playstore Integration page (https://fdplaystore.spritle.com/userDashboard/my_apps).
• Click Add App to add your Playstore app.
• Enter the Playstore app name, and package name and upload the downloaded JSON file

• Click Add app.

• Select a star rating and Enable polling status to start fetching the Playstore reviews
  

The application will fetch new reviews every 5 minutes and add them to Freshdesk.

Limitation

• The maximum number of apps that can be integrated will vary depending on your Freshdesk plan. Refer to the below table,

• A maximum of 20 reviews/app will be fetched from Playstore every 5 minutes.
  
  

⚠️ Please disregard the warning message when responding to a Play Store ticket because the recipient will still receive the response and the application flow won't be affected.

Due to Google's policy of not disclosing user identities, the app generates a random email based on the review id, which is the cause of the warning message.

Installation video (YouTube)

You can find the complete setup procedure video on YouTube.

Link: https://youtu.be/OniwZnHFlWs