1. Cross Platform Push with Azure
Jason Farrell
Centare – Chicago, IL
@jfarrell

2. Who Am I? Staff Consultant for Centare Chicago
Consultant for 6yrs (Chicago, Michigan, NYC)
Variety of verticals
Specializing in web, client, and mobile
Hockey and Travel enthusiast

3. 1 2 3 1 2 3 Who is Centare? Modern / Agile Transformation
Teams
Executives
Organizations
Modern / Agile Transformation
Assessment 1
Training 2
Coaching 3
Milwaukee
Chicago
Madison
Deep Platform Leadership
Modern / Agile Software Delivery
Agile Techniques
ALM
Cloud 1
Teams
Scale
Flexibility 2
Turnkey
Off Site
On Site 3
#1 Scrum.org partner in the world
2011 Microsoft ALM Partner of the Year Finalist
Transformation and Delivery
SCRUM be applied to any area, not just technical
Delivery done using SCRUM with sprints or on site delivery experts
Reduce cost and risk

4. Lets talk about why First modern smartphone – Apple iPhone
Clearly defined as a telephony + data device
Relied on the user to pull their data
Later added Notification Center to support APNS
Android Widgets
Feed data from services directly to the user
At a glance decision making
First real concept of an app experience
Windows Live tiles
Push is a central component of the OS
Live tiles serve as the desktop & Notification Center
Data is part of the entire phone experience
Lack of a dedicated Notification Center is a weakness of the OS
App vs Experience
Push allows the experience of your app to extend beyond when its running

5. Push Notification by Platform

6. Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) Launch in 2009
Device Token is for security, to identify the device
Payload size may NOT exceed 256 bytes
Shared with OSX (>= Lion)
Requires certification of the app via a provisioning profile
Provisioning profile is associated with the app in XCode

7. Google Cloud Messaging
Service Polling
Service polls a remote service in the background (Twitter)
Google Cloud Messaging
Successor to Google Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM)
4KB payload limit
ID Based
Relies on a built in receiver (GCMBroadcastReceiver) and the custom defined GCMIntentService
Class name appears to be required (GCMIntentService)

8. Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS)
Raw allows 1KB for payload size
Windows Notification Service (WNS)
Requires a token
5kb payload size
Full featured
Send Raw, Tile, and Toast
WNS requires client secret and Package Identifier (obtained from Windows store)
Sent over HTTPS (MPNS uses HTTP)
Separate services, for now.

9. The Tiles Windows Phone 8 offers three templates: Iconic Cycle Flip
Mention background override technique
Over 50 tile templates in Windows 8 (resources for link)

10. Push Notification Registration
How it works
Push Notification Registration
Pretty much the same for all platforms, though nomanclature differs
- Apple: Device Token
- Google: Registration Id
- Windows: Channel Url
Device contacts the notifications service (MPNS, GCM, APNS, WNS)
Notification Service returns an identifier for the device
When it comes time to send a push, use this identifier to send the notification
Identifier received from Notification Service
Send a request for a Push identifier

11. How it works Push Service
An external service is operating in the cloud or it could even be a website
Tells the provider to send a push notification to a client (remember the identifier)
The provider and the service can be one in the same or they can be different
The service receives the request and sends to the specific device
Many scenarios are enabled in this model (ex. Codemash Polling)

12. A variety of third party providers exist
A variety of ways to communicate with connected devices in real time
Also offer ways to store device data in the cloud
Parse supports Push for iOS and Android
Urban Airship supports iOS, Android, Blackverry, and Windows Phone/Windows
Azure Mobile Services supports Windows, Android and iOS Push
Pusher is Push for your HTML5 apps

13. Mobile Services
Mobile Services is one of the many offerings from the Azure platform
Easiest means I have found to universally support all platforms

14. A bit about Azure Mobile Services
Cloud based storage
Backed by SQL Azure
Integrated with node.js for Push Notifications
Supports authentication against Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google
No REST API for notifications
SQL Azure is accessible from SQL Server Management Studio
Dynamic Table Creation
All tables must have an Id column
Table must be created before it can be used
Schema will change if the object signature changes and dynamic schema is enabled
Can be turned off
No joining – views are possible, but not recommended (SSMS)
Application Key does NOT guarantee security
To maintain security at the user level for tables, use authentication (FB, Twitter, etc)
Master Key for admin operations

15. node.js Integration Full featured API for all push services
Can send badges for iOS, sound file, and additional data if desired
GCM sends a JSON object to the Android device, pull extras (demo)
MPNS has methods for each of the supported notification methods
WNS has a method for every support notification as well (over 50 ways)
MPNS method names
sendFlipTile
sendTile
sendToast
sendRaw
Custom node.js modules are not allowed
Events
Util
Crypto
String_decoder
Path
Dns
Punycode
Readline
Assert
Zlib
azure
Full support for logging as a means to debug

16. Pricing Free and Reserved Reserved is $0.10/hr per instance
Free is shared, Reserved is dedicated
Free 165MB outbound data per day
5GB free on standard rates
Pay for the database – most subscriptions grant free DB space
~$5/mn for a since DB between 0 and 100MB
Outbound data 5GB equates
21 million pushes to APNS (at max size)
1.3 million pushes to GCM (at max size)
5.2 million raw notifications to MPNS (at max size)
1 million notifications to WNS (at max size)

17. Cross Platform Push Demonstration
SignalR, MVC4, Web API, Objective-C, Java, C#, XAML, JavaScript
Register all devices
Update Azure with the values
How are the values obtained
Windows 8
Google
Apple
Add the Script
Push to devices

18. How the Demo works Azure Mobile Services Web App Registration API
Client Devices

19. Closing Thoughts
The way we used a smartphone changed with the advent of the iPhone
It has further evolved since
The way we gather data has changed as well
Expecting the user to Pull their own data is not acceptable
Proliferation of social services
Reliance on smartphones as data devices
An app is temporary, an experience is forever
Create a continuous experience with Push

20. Resources http://www.parse.com http://bit.ly/AzureMS
- Complete Demo Source code

21. Questions or Comments

22. Thank You