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

2. About Me
Nuno Filipe Godinho Independent Consultant – Windows Azure MVP Mail: Blog:

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Enhanced Push Notifications and Live Tiles for Windows Phone
Context

6. 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.

7. 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 on Exchange when it receives an .

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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.

16. 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> <wp:Count>4</wp:Count> <wp:Title>World News Updates</wp:Title>         <wp:BackBackgroundImage> <wp:BackContent>Peace talks resume</wp:BackContent> <wp:BackTitle>Middle East News</wp:BackTitle>     </wp:Tile>
</wp:Notification>

17. 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>

18. 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

19. 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.

20. Thank You Nuno Filipe Godinho Independent Consultant