Enhance Your Mobile Engagement Strategy with Azure

1. Enhance Your Mobile Engagement Strategy with Azure Elio Damaggio | Program Manager II, Azure Notification Hubs Miranda Luna | Product Manager, Azure Mobile

2. Course Topics

3. Please leave this area blank to allow for picture in picture recording Setting Expectations • Target Audience • Mobile app developers that want to drive higher customer engagement and retention • Suggested Prerequisites/Supporting Material • MVA Notification Hubs Deep Dive • Azure Fridays • Broadcasting Alerts • Filtering Alerts • Templates & Internalization • User Specific Alerts

4. Join the MVA Community! • Microsoft Virtual Academy—Free online training! • Ask questions in the Born to Learn MVA Forum! • Visit http://aka.ms/MVAForum • Earn while you learn! • 50 MVA Points for this event! • Visit http://aka.ms/MVA-Voucher • Code: BldgBlks3

5. 01 | Azure Mobile

6. Push Notifications Mobile push notification engine for existing apps Enhance push notifications in any app with personalization and localization Improves user engagement and retention by delivering relevant content more quickly Mobile Backend Ready-made mobile app backend for iOS, Android and Windows Create new mobile apps or add a mobility layer to existing systems Speeds up development time and reduces ongoing maintenance cost Device Messaging Messaging infrastructure that sits between and within applications Build multi-tier and hybrid applications or smart device information exchange patterns Delivers inter- and intra-app messages faster and connects on-premises systems to the cloud

7. 02 | Notification Hubs

8. Mobile Push Notifications 101 • Register device handle at app launch • Client app contacts Platform Notification Service (PNS) • App updates handle in backend client app • Send Notification • App backend sends notification to PNS • PNS pushes the notification to the app on the device Platform Notification Service • Maintain device handles • Delete expired handles when PNS rejects them App back-end

9. Push Notification Challenges While there are significant benefits to using push notifications in a mobile app, rolling your own push infrastructure is extremely difficult in terms of implementing a system capable of: • Cross-Platform Push Notifications Each push service (APNS for iOS, GCM for Android, WNS for Windows, etc.) has different protocols (e.g., HTTP vs. TCP, xml payload vs. JSON payload) • Personalizing on the server-side based on interest and location Segmenting users based on interest tags and routing only the most relevant content to each segment • Localizing notifications on the client-side based on language, currency, device, etc. Each device displays notifications differently • High-Volume with Low Latency Limited by the capability of each VM so need to spin up scores of VMs and shard your application in order to serve a large user base • Maintaining accurate device handle registry Adding registrations upon installation, updating tags, pruning upon on uninstall

10. Azure Push Notifications One-time set up Create a Notification Hub Register The client app retrieves its current handle from the PNS. Client app (or app backend) registers the handle with Notification Hub Send Notification The app back-end sends a message to the Notification Hub. Notification Hub pushes it to the PNS Android app iOS app Windows 8.x app Notification Hub App back-end WNS APNs MPNS GCM

11. Tags and Templates Use Tags for Segmentation Only send message to this segment of users Use Templates for Personalization & Localization Display message in a particular format

12. 03 | Broadcast Push

13. Bing News Register device ChannelURIs WNS MPNS Windows 8 devices Breaking news Notification Hubs Bing Notification Platform Windows Phone devices

14. Broadcast to all usersTags App back-end Broadcast a notification to all users by making a single API from your app backend w/o specifying any tags Notification Hub App back-end

15. 04 | Segmented Push

16. Sochi 2014 Results App

17. How Sochi used Notification Hubs Register device ChannelURIs country, sport, athlete, medals, emergency alerts,... Register device tokens for tags APNS GCM MPNS WNS Result Alerts Notification Hubs Sochi.ru backend

18. Notify a segment, based on interestTags Tags as interest groups Client app can register with a set of interest tags. Tags are simple strings (no pre-provisioning is required) App backend can target all clients with the same tag in a single API call Tag Expressions allow you to segment any subset of interest tags that can be expressed using Boolean expressions Users tagged for Rolling Stones AND Beatles (band:RollingStones && band:Beatles) Users tagged for either Rolling Stones or Beatles (band:RollingStones || band:Beatles) Users tagged for Rolling Stones but not also Beatles (band:RollingStones && !band:Beatles Users tagged for Rolling Stones or Beatles in Seattle ((band:Rolling Stones || band:Beatles) && loc:Seattle) App back-end Tag: ”Beatles” Notification Hub Tag: ”Beatles” Tag: ”RollingStones” App back-end

19. Notify a single logical userTags App back-end Tags can be used to represent individual logical users Client app authenticates with the app backend Devices pass device handle to the app backend App backend registers the devices for the tag “userId” Target individual users by specifying particular “userId” tag Notification Hub App back-end Tag: ”00430924” Tag: ”00568282”

20. 05 | Localized Push

21. LocalizationTemplates <toast> <visual> <binding template=\"ToastText01\"> <text id=\"1\">$(tempF)</text> </binding> </visual> </toast> Registration Client apps can register with personalized templates, e.g., Alice’s Surface wants to receive weather information in F degrees. Bob’s iPhone wants weather information in C degrees. Send notification. App back-end sends a message including both temperatures: {tempC: “16”, tempF: “61”}. Template Expressions. Template support a simple expression language: E.g., {‘Sam, ’+$(friend)+’ added you to ’+$(groupName)+‘ group’}. 16 Notification Hub • {tempC: “23”, tempF: “73”} App back-end • { • aps: { • alert: “$(tempC)” • } • } 61

22. 06 | Push-to-Sync

23. Push to Sync Use push notifications to update all devices when user makes an update on one Adding music to a playlist on tablet, then syncing that update to phone Send notification to ‘wake up’ the client app Client app pulls update from app backend User never experiences a visual tile or toast, just views the synced content on all devices Notification Hub Platform Notification Service App back-end

24. 07 | Push-to-Pull

25. Push to Pull Send a push notification to the device Push notification prompts the device to pull information from the app backend Device then pulls the information directly from the app backend Information does not flow through PNS or NH PNS pushes the notification to the app on the device Information is displayed to the user just like a normal mobile push notification, even though it travels more directly and securely Notification Hub Platform Notification Service App back-end

26. 08 | Retargeting & Coupons

27. Retargeting • Every time you send a push notification, you learn something about that customer • Use that information to inform tag updates and send more targeted content • Key points to remember: • Keep user profiles in app back-end • Regularly update tags with updated segments coming from analytics/CRM…

28. Demo Example • Shopping app sends push to: • Notify of status of current purchases • Retarget users that do not complete purchases • Publicize coupons/offers • Notification system has to handle: • Segments • Advanced targeting

29. Retargeting & Coupons

30. Coupon Lifecycle • Register tags based on • Location • CRM/demographics • App usage • Target users with offer • Track coupon performance • Update Tags • Retarget Tapped coupon CRM Loc:NYC && loyalty:gold App back-end Loc:NYC && loyalty:gold && !tapped:{couponId} Notification Hub 32

31. 09 | Scale & Security

32. Scale & Security • Each namespace can have 50 hubs, but scale namespaces, not hubs • Maintain a test hub and a prod hub • If you regularly broadcast to >5M devices, might want to shard against multiple namespaces in different regions for optimal performance • Implement security on the device, use multi-factor auth • Manage PNS creds at the namespace-level if you have multiple departments with send and read rights • Warning: this introduces additional complexities

33. 10 | Resources

34. Mobile Engagement at //build • Mobile Push Notifications to Any Client with Azure Notification Hubs • Wednesday 4/2 5:30 – 6:30 PST • Elio Damaggio • @ElioDamaggio • Powerful mobile apps with Mobile Services and ASP.NET Web API • Thursday 4/3 5:30 – 6:30 PST • Kirill Gavrylyuk, Yavor Georgiev • @KirillG_MSFT, @theyavor • Building Cross-Platform Line of Business Apps with Mobile Services • Friday 4/4 12:30 – 1:30 PST • Donna Malayeri, Chris Risner • @lindydonna, @ChrisRisner • All videos will be available on Channel9

35. Notification Hubs Resources Windows Azure Mobile Services Overview, Tutorials and Resources Azure Documentation Center MSDN Documenation Android (tutorial) iOS (tutorial) Windows Store (tutorial) Windows Phone (tutorial) Learn/Channel 9Introduction | iOS | Windows Store | Tags and Templates REST API Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj710108.aspx Windows Azure Pricinghttp://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/notification-hubs/ Microsoft Azure Certified Traininghttp://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/training/azure.aspx