Dear OneNote API dev team

Hi,

I’m only writing this publicly as I don’t know how to get hold of you, and that’s kind of the point.

Sure there are many official channels including your website, Uservoice, Stack Overflow and even Twitter, but none of these seem suitable for certain circumstances.

If the API goes down, how do we find out when it will be back?

If our app suddenly gets blocked, who can we talk to?

If we get stuck with a problem and after posting on stack overflow, triple checking our code and making sure there are no environmental reasons for our problem and everything is pointing to an issue with  your API, how do we escalate things?

If we discover obvious bugs with the API, where do you want them? Stack Overflow? I can point to at least 2 examples where I’ve posted on SO what seemed to be bugs. I didn’t get a response, but magically the problem was fixed days later.

My own immediate problem is that during development one of my API calls is getting throttled. I am not hammering your API. I am getting a list of recently modified pages for only certain notebooks, this gets a 429 error 9 times out of 10. I am not doing any automated retrying, I am simply manually developing, using the same user account over and over as I develop my application and refine workflows. If I leave things over 24 hours and try again, *maybe* the first call will work then we’re right back to getting a 429 response the majority of the time.

Ironically if I use my – now working – query against you API console I get a proxy timeout, so I wonder if it’s taking too long to execute?

Anyway, my issue notwithstanding – though I really would like it sorted please! – I’m now generally nervous about developing against your API.

As I’m sure you’ll understand it’s a major investment developing an application and to do so against an API where I have almost zero visibility and feedback is making me very nervous. Before I continue to build I’m looking for some reassurances that there are communication channels over and above social media.

I understand that you’re all busy doing great work. I understand that you are probably inundated with lots of simple enquires where RTM would be a reasonable response, but as far as I can tell once we get past that and start embarking on building a commercial product that utilises your API, there’s a gap and at this moment I’m feeling like I’ve fallen right into it.

So, how do developers like me get hold of you? Can you provide a clearer escalation path please?

Thanks in advance.