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Cross Device People API

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Windows is an ideal platform for third party apps to integrate their top people contacts. This integration enables users to interact with the personas for various people experiences. Windows now provides third party WinUI 3, UWP, and other apps with package identity with APIs to store all their contacts.

Important

Some information relates to a prerelease product which may be substantially modified before it's commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.

Note

Apps can try this feature as soon as it is released to the Windows Insider Program (Beta Channel) in Windows Update settings (see Get started with the Windows Insider Program for more information).

Once your apps store their contacts in Windows, users will be able to see these contact suggestions on the Share panel in Windows to seamlessly share with their top contacts. See How to share files in File Explorer on Windows for more information about the Share panel.

Creating a UserDataAccount for People Contract

Start by creating a user data account. Third party apps are required to create a UserDataAccount with UserDisplayName as "com.microsoft.peoplecontract".

UserDataAccountStore udas =
    await UserDataAccountManager.RequestStoreAsync(UserDataAccountStoreAccessType.AppAccountsReadWrite);
UserDataAccount uda = await udas.CreateAccountAsync("com.microsoft.peoplecontract");

Next, add "com.microsoft.windows.system" to the list of ExplictReadAccessPackageFamilyNames for the account. This will provide restricted access of third party contacts to Windows experiences.

uda.ExplictReadAccessPackageFamilyNames.Add("com.microsoft.windows.system");
await uda.SaveAsync();

Storing contacts

The first step in storing contacts is to create a contact list. To do this, third party apps must create the new contact list for a UserDataAccount in the Windows ContactStore. Apps can choose to keep the default OtherAppReadAccess access type for the contact list, while setting it to None will prevent other apps from having any access to these contacts. See the ContactListOtherAppReadAccess enum for the full list of available access types.

ContactStore store = await ContactManager.RequestStoreAsync(ContactStoreAccessType.AppContactsReadWrite);
this.contactList = await store.CreateContactListAsync(contactListsName, uda.Id);
contactList.OtherAppReadAccess = ContactListOtherAppReadAccess.None;
await contactList.SaveAsync();

While storing a contact, third party apps must include all relevant information required for Windows experiences to power a Contact.

The following fields are required when storing a contact:

  • FirstName
  • RemoteId
  • DisplayPicture

The following fields are optional:

  • LastName
  • Phones
  • Emails

This code snippet demonstrates how to store a contact:

foreach (var appContact in AppContacts)
{
  var cont = new Contact
  {
    FirstName = appContact.FirstName,
    LastName = appContact.LastName,
    RemoteId = appContact.Id,
    SourceDisplayPicture = RandomAccessStreamReference.CreateFromUri(new Uri(appContact.ProfilePicPath)),
    Phones = { new ContactPhone { Number = appContact.Phone } }
  };

  await this.contactList.SaveContactAsync(cont);
}

Note

The DisplayName for the Contact is constructed using FirstName and LastName. If the last name is not provided, DisplayName will be identical to the string provided for the first name.

Storing ranks for contacts

You can create an annotation list for the UserDataAccount to store ranks for your contacts. Apps can store ranks for their top contacts by adding annotations to the contacts. These annotations are stored as part of an annotation list in the contact store.

ContactAnnotationStore annotationStore = await
    ContactManager.RequestAnnotationStoreAsync(ContactAnnotationStoreAccessType.AppAnnotationsReadWrite);
this.contactAnnotationList = await annotationStore.CreateAnnotationListAsync(uda.Id);

You can store ranks for your top contacts by using the annotations on contacts. Ranks are stored as part of ProviderProperties on a contact annotation. Along with rank, apps must set the SupportedOperations on a contact annotation as Share.

foreach (var appContact in topAppContacts)
{
  Contact contact = await list.GetContactFromRemoteIdAsync(topAppContact.RemoteID);
  var annotation = new ContactAnnotation
  {
    ContactId = contact.Id,
    SupportedOperations = ContactAnnotationOperations.Share
  };
  annotation.ProviderProperties.Add("Rank", rank);
  await annotationsLst.TrySaveAnnotationAsync(annotation);
}

Updating contact ranks

It's at the discretion of apps when to update the ranks of the contacts stored in Windows. Windows recommends that ranked lists be updated regularly to provide the best user experience. Whenever you need to update a ranked list, you'll need to follow several steps.

  1. Delete the ContactAnnotationList.

    Once the app has an updated list of top contacts, the annotation list can be deleted and a new annotation list with updated annotations for their top contacts can be created.

    await this.contactAnnotationList.DeleteAsync();

  2. Create a new ContactAnnotationList. Follow the steps in the Storing ranks for contacts section to create a new annotation list and store ranks for your top contacts.

See also