App Submission - Help/Support Link Requirement

Question

We are submitting an Outlook add-in app to the Office Store. Our add-in has a "Help" link in it that points to our customer care / support site. However, our support site does require a log in...our customers need to log in to search knowledge base, log a support case, etc. We have no way around the fact that our support site requires log in...this is just how our support mechanism works. So, we are getting the following comment with our rejected submission: "The current Support URL in your add-in metadata, as submitted via the Seller Dashboard, requires authentication. Please use a Support URL that is publicly available."

Has anyone come across this? If we don't have a publicly available URL for our support site, that doesn't require login, what other options do we have?

Answer 1

The support link submitted with your add-in metadata, is the link that will appear on the Office Store on your add-in listing as the "Provider's Website".

This link does not have to be a link to your support site; but can be a link to your main website. Hope this helps!

Answer 2

You can create a public facing support site with simple text stating that support is paid/requires credentials and provide a link to the protected URL. For all unpaid/free trial users, you can list an email address within the same text.