Taking A Metro Ride On Windows 8 And Windows Azure

Kristof Rennen

Who Am I? Kristof Rennen

Architect at Capgemini Belgium Microsoft Extended Experts Team Member Crew Member of Azug, the Belgian Windows Azure User

Group

@kristofrennen contact@kristofrennen.be

Agenda Integrating Windows 8 and Windows Azure Tiles & Notifications Windows Push Notification Service

Integrating Windows 8 and Windows Azure

Using Storage Accessing storage directly

Getting and storing data in tables Using blobs, images, content from blobs Accessing queues to push messages

+ Easy Quickly up and running Scaled for you (but limited)

- Caching needed Less flexible & more error prone Not easy to change (tight coupling) Less transparent Security (credentials on client side)

Using a Service / API Accessing a (REST) service or an API Data being transferred as Json, XML, … +

Loosely coupled, easy to change Caching is easy Transparent Easily scalable Error handling Reusable

- Scale yourself Contract versioning, not changeable Data size / format important Security needed (e.g. OAuth)

Queue Work Work to be split up in read and write Reads go through the API and directly to storage Writes go through the API and into a Queue A worker processes the Queue and writes to storage +

Loosely coupled Less compute needed Reads need to be fast, writes can be slower Fault tolerant Scale

- Error handling on failed writes Idempotency needed

Interactivity Using Notifications Various types: toast, badge, tile and raw Uses Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) +

Interactivity Notify user when action / refresh needed Notify user when new data is available Flexible, scalable and free

- Not easy to setup at the moment Update needed for Windows 8 Release Preview Channel and endpoint management needed Microsoft only (for the moment)

Secure It Security managed for you Integrate with: Live Id, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Open Id Claim based + Windows Identity Foundation +

Transparent security Easy to implement Claims Easy configuration

- Extra cost Less control Less flexibility Claim limitation (e.g. Live Id)

Hybrid Access on premise machines from the cloud Integrated solutions Security, mail, applications +

Loosely coupled Firewall friendly Re-use of on premise servers Easy transition

- Scalability Single Point Of Failure Azure connect setup

Tiles

Wide (2x1)Square (1x1)

Basic Tiles Tap on a tile to launch or switch to an app Static default tile specified in app manifest Two sizes (user controlled)

Both sizes support live updates (peek, local or cloud, templates)

Notifications

Tile Notifications Change the tile displayed on the start screen Supports images Supports text To be foreseen in both sizes

Toast Notifications Deliver transient messages outside the context of the app Gets the user’s attention immediately User is in control and can permanently turn off toast

notifications from your app Allows quick navigation to a contextually relevant location

in your app Toast notifications are easy to invoke from your app or from

the cloud

Badge Notifications Overlay on top of a tile Supports an icon Supports text Notify users of updated items in the app Can be shown on lock screen as well

Raw NotificationsType of push notificationNo UIPerform background tasks

Make your app alive with activityusing Tiles and Notifications

Windows Push Notification Service

Windows Notification Service Enables delivery of tile and toast notifications over the

internet. Tile updates and notifications shown to the user even if

your app is not running. WNS handles communication with your app Scales to millions of users WNS is a free service for your app to use

Push Notification OverviewWindows 8 Cloud Service

Windows Notification

Service

Metro Style App

Notification

Client Platform

2

3

1 3

1. Request Channel URI

2. Register with your Cloud Service

3. Authenticate & Push Notification

Push Notification OverviewWindows 8 Cloud Service

Windows Notification

Service

2

3

3

Request Channel URI

Register with your Cloud Service

Authenticate & Push NotificationMetro Style App

Notification

Client Platform

Building a Cloud Service with Window AzureWhat a service needs to support

Secure, web based API for channel URI registration.

Persistent storage of channel URI.

Storage for tile and toast images.

How do I do that with Windows Azure?

Windows Azure Compute• Web Role

• Full IIS support

• WCF REST and ASP.NET MVC

Windows Azure Storage• Table Storage

• Blob Storage

Register your App

Windows Push Notifications Service using Windows Azure

demo

Recap

Make your app alive with activityusing Tiles and Notifications

Use Windows Notifications Service when app is not running

Leverage Windows Azure to provide cloud service infrastructure

Resources

Register your app

http://manage.dev.live.com/build

Download the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8

http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/

Windows 8 Developer Documentation

http://manage.dev.live.com/build

Tools

Windows 8 Release Preview

http://windows.microsoft.com/nl-BE/windows-8/release-preview

MVC 4 RC

http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc4

Visual Studio 2012 RC

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us

Further reading and documentation

Creating tiles and toast

Quickstart: Creating a tile notification

UX guidelines for tiles

Creating and managing tiles, toast, and Windows push notifications

Push notification client sample