Enhanced Push Notifications and Live Tiles for Windows Phone Nuno Godinho Independent Consultant @NunoGodinho

About Me Nuno Filipe Godinho Independent Consultant – Windows Azure MVP Mail: Nuno.Godinho@sapo.pt Nuno.Godinho@itech4all.com Blog: http://msmvps.org/blogs/nunogodinho Twitter: @NunoGodinho

This are two similar apps about Traffic Cameras from the Seattle are, but the one on the left is free and the one on the right is paid, but the paid one is more popular, and this is because it has Push Notifications and integration with the tiles. This is very important to get your apps more popular.

Agenda General information for Push and Tiles Experience Architecture Scenarios/Popular Applications What We Heard… New Features New APIs API Demo Push Features Performance/Efficiency/Reliability Tile/Toast Push Demo

Enhanced Push Notifications and Live Tiles for Windows Phone Context

Push Notifications and Live Tiles MIX 11 9/10/2018 Push Notifications and Live Tiles Push Notifications offer developers a way to send timely information to their applications even when they are not around + Windows phone has the unique ability to provide the end user glanceable access to the information they care most about, via Live Tiles Other phones have push notifications that allow us to send data to our phone, but no other one has Live Tiles which indicates how your apps is currently and gives you the context of your app © 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

Push Notification UX Components Toast notifications Tile notifications Default tile pinned to start Count, Title, Background Raw notifications 7 Title Count Background Toast – like what happens with SMS’s you receive the information on the top of the phone UI and then it allows you to directly link into the Application using the Deep-Linking Tile Notifications – Information directly to the Tile, like Default Count, Title and Background Raw – allows your app to send information directly to your apps without them needing to pull anything. Works a bit like push email on Exchange when it receives an email.

Push Notification Architecture Cloud Service Push URI to Cloud Service 4 Push enabled application 3 1 Push URI request/response 5 HTTP Post to URI with payload Push client service Push notification to device 6 Windows Phone 7 2 Push client/server negotiation On the windows Phone we have the Push enabled Application that is built by us, and the the Push client service that is available in the phone. Cloud Service – our Cloud service that will communicate with our app MPNS – Microsoft Push Notification Service 1 – When our app runs for the first time of periatically it asks for a URI to uniquely identify our phone 2 - If we are looking for a new one the Push client Service will contact the MPNS in order to register the phone and MPNS sends the uri to the push client service 3 - The Push Client Service will send the uri received by the MPNS 4 – Then we send the received uri to our Cloud service in order for the service to communicate with the Phone Note: You should do some binding between the user and the uri, in order so that if something happens with the user 5 – Now the Cloud Service sends the push notification to MPNS based on the uri received by the push enabled app. This will be a simple xml via HTTP post 6 – MPNS located our device and sends the notification and message. MPNS

Scenarios/Popular Applications Weather Apps Weather Tile Warning Toast Chess by Post Turn Tile Move Toast Beezz Unread Tile Direct Toast Send to WP7 Link Tile Link Toast AlphaJax Turn Tile Move Toast Seattle Traffic Map Traffic Tile There are hundreds and hundreds of Push apps in Marketplace! These are some samples of Applications with push notifications Weather Apps that integrate with the Tile and use push notifications, toasts are normally used in this case for warnings like flood and huricane Send to WP7 – Let’s you start reading content on your PC and if you get interrupted this has a plugin for the browser in order to continue reading in the phone, by sending a push notification Games – Tile integrated in order to inform you if it’s your turn based on a push notification Beez – Twitter App that uses updates to the tile in order for you to see how many unread tweets you have. You get a toast if someone DM’s you. Also they do a different and custom tiles that are built on the server and pushed for the app tile

What Microsoft Team Heard… Give me more control of my tile Give me richer notifications and interaction Give me more reliable notifications Give me more endpoints per phone Give me more cloud samples Give me more control of my tile – have the same capabilities for 3rd parties as for the MS apps Give me richer notifications and interaction – More integration like what happens in MS apps Give me more reliable notifications Give me more endpoints per phone – because there’s a limit of apps that can be using endpoints Give me more cloud samples

Enhanced Push Notifications and Live Tiles for Windows Phone New Features!

Live Tiles – Local Tile API Local tile updates (these are *not* push) Full control of all properties when your app is in the foreground or background Calorie counter, sticky notes MultiTile! Create/Update/Delete Launches directly to page/experience Application Tile Launches main app experience Previously you only were able to change the tiles using the MPNS and the Cloud Service. With this Live Tile API you have full control of the properties of the tile both front end and background. This doesn’t need push for that. Multiple tiles – Capability to have more than one Tile for the same app providing deeplinking to your app Secondary Tile Launches world news page Secondary Tile Launches local news page

Live Tiles – Local Tile API Continued… Back of tile updates Full control of all properties when your app is in the foreground or background Content, Title, Background Flips from front to back at random interval Smart logic to make flips asynchronous Title Content Background Content string is bigger Now in “Mango” we have the background of the tile

Demo Live Tiles – Local Tile API Create, Update, Delete Use C:\Users\nfg\Documents\My Dropbox\Windows Phone Mango PT Event\Live tiles\Live tiles\MixDemo Show the app running Note: When you pin something to your start menu the app is stopped and navigating away in order to avoid spaming you start menu When we want to use Toasts we need user permission. It’s mandatory. Show the Code Look at the MainPage.xaml.cs In the OnNavigatedTo look that the UpdatePinImage method to change the Tiles ShellTile is the base class to interact with the Tiles in the Start Menu Look at TogglePinnedTile method in the App.xaml.cs StardardTileData – Standard Data that you can put inside the Tile ShellTile.Create – Creates a tile in the Start Menu and it receives the PageName in order to do the deeplinking and if needed send a parameter to it ShellTile.Delete – Deletes a tile from the Start Menu Look at the Push Notifications at the WorldNews.xaml.cs OnNavigated looks for the push Channel that will be shown on the next sample Look at the ResetTile method. It’s important to know that normally the count of the tile is based on what you haven’t seen since the last view of the app Look at the ToogleToast method Checks if the channel is currently bound to a shell toast Channel.BindToShellToast method will connect the toast notifications to your app

Push Notifications – Core Enhancements MIX 11 9/10/2018 Push Notifications – Core Enhancements Reliability 30 Endpoint Limit! Efficiency Performance Rewritten TDET mechanism for broader network compatibility Lowered polling interval for non-persistent connection friendly networks TLS resume for sessions within 8 hours Hints for improved radio dormancy Concurrent tile downloads for less radio uptime Faster state machine for faster client service Smarter queue logic for less redundancy Reliability Rewritten TDET (Time out Detection) mechanism for broader network compatibility Lowered polling interval for non-persistent connection friendly networks (gone from 1 hour in Wp7 to 15 min in the wp7 mango) Efficiency TLS (Transport Layer Security) resume for sessions within 8 hours Hints for improved radio dormancy Concurrent tile downloads for less radio uptime (if we have more than one tile and info to download they do everything at a time in order to lower the time of radio usage) Performance Faster state machine for faster client service Smarter queue logic for less redundancy Increase the Endpoints to 30 push enabled apps in the phone at a tile © 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

Push Notifications – New Features! MultiTile/Back of Tile Support Multiple weather locations, news categories, sports team scores, twitter favorites Can update all tiles belonging to your application No API Change! – BindToShellTile now binds you to all tiles Send Tile ID to service and use new attribute to direct update 3 new elements for back properties <wp:Notification xmlns:wp="WPNotification">     <wp:Tile Id=“/WorldNews.xaml?how=start”>         <wp:BackgroundImage>http://www.contoso.com/worldTile.png</wp:BackgroundImage> <wp:Count>4</wp:Count> <wp:Title>World News Updates</wp:Title>         <wp:BackBackgroundImage>http://www.contoso.com/worldBack.png</wp:BackBackgroundImage> <wp:BackContent>Peace talks resume</wp:BackContent> <wp:BackTitle>Middle East News</wp:BackTitle>     </wp:Tile> </wp:Notification>

Push Notifications – New Features! Deep Toast Take users directly to an application experience: weather alerts, breaking news, direct tweets Use standard SL navigation (OnNavigatedTo) No API change! – BindToShellToast still all you need. 1 new element to send query parameters with a toast <wp:Notification xmlns:wp="WPNotification">     <wp:Toast>         <wp:Text1>World News Updates</wp:Text1> <wp:Text2>Egypt braces for march in palace square</wp:Text2> <wp:Param>/detailsPage.xaml?storyid=186435</wp:Param>     </wp:Toast> </wp:Notification>

Demo Push Notifications – New Features! MultiTile, Back of Tile, Deep Toast Mix Demo App Show the Demo now with the Notifications Show the Code of the service

How’d We Do? Give me more control of my tile Local/Multi/Back of tile MIX 11 9/10/2018 How’d We Do? Give me more control of my tile Local/Multi/Back of tile Give me richer notifications and interaction Multi/Back of tile Deep Toast Give me more reliable notifications Reliability, Efficiency, Performance Give me more endpoints per phone 30 Endpoints! Give me more cloud samples Azure Recipes, Samples, Rewritten MSDN Docs © 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

Thank You Nuno Filipe Godinho Independent Consultant Nuno.Godinho@sapo.pt Nuno.Godinho@itech4all.com http://msmvps.org/blogs/nunogodinho Twitter: @NunoGodinho