August 31, 2015 at 11:42

Windows 10 through 10. Release # 2. Interaction with users through live tiles and notifications

Original author: Rajen Kishna
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In a previous article, we talked about how, in three steps, you can increase the visibility and frequency of installations of your application by Windows 10 users. In this article we will continue the topic of improving user interaction through one of the most favorite features of Windows applications: live tiles and notifications.

If you are already a Windows application developer, you are probably already familiar with using live tiles and notifications. If not, then the growing number of Windows 10 users is a good motivation to start thinking about their implementation in the application. Below is a description of what we added in the top ten.


New opportunities:
  • Universal Support Center (Action Center) - after notifications are received, they fall into a special system area called the support center. In Windows 10, we added a support center in Windows on desktops, laptops, and tablets (in addition to smartphones on which it was already available). This means that users can go back to notifications that they might have missed due to the nature of the notifications and can also interact with them in new ways.


  • Adaptive and interactive notifications - notifications on Windows devices can now display an interactive interface so that users can directly enter something or perform some action directly in them. This means that you can process the input information and even execute the application code without having to remove the user from the current context. Pop-up notifications can also be supplemented with an image in addition to text.
  • Responsive Live Tile Templates - The contents of live tiles can now be described in a simple markup language, giving you flexibility in how content is displayed in the tile. Adaptive tiles also take into account different screen resolutions, so you can be sure that the tiles look good on all devices.
  • Improved mechanism for fixing secondary tiles - a request for fixing secondary tiles is now made without additional interaction with the user or system, so your application can start executing additional code as soon as the tiles are fixed. It will also allow you to fix several tiles at once and send them updates after fixing.
  • Synchronization of live tiles and notifications - We have added a new type of trigger for background tasks, ToastNotificationHistoryChangedTrigger , which works if the collection of application notifications has been changed by something other than the application itself. This means that you can execute the code when the user clears the notification in the support center, when the notification expires or when new notifications are delivered through Windows Push Notification Services (WNS). Such a mechanism should also help you keep the tiles up to date.
  • Combining icons (badges) - Finally, icons for live tiles are now unified between devices: glyphs available primarily on Windows, now also available on Windows Mobile devices 10. In this way, live tiles can appear consistent between different devices.


Let's see how to build relationships with users through new notifications and live tiles so that they work with your application the way you want.

Responsive and interactive notifications


In Windows 10, pop-up notifications can be configured to display text, images, and interactions. Previously, when sending a notification, you selected from the catalog of templates for notifications , which provided limited flexibility in display and did not allow receiving input from the user. The sound that plays when a notification appears can also be easily configured. The following is an example of how this works:

SampleThis is a simple toast notification example




As mentioned, such interactive elements can be used to run code through the background tasks of your application so that users can stay in the current context, but at the same time have the opportunity to interact with your application. To do this, you need to declare a new background task in Package.appxmanifest, using the new type “Push notification”:



In the background task itself, you can now process predefined arguments and user input as follows:
namespace Tasks
{
    public sealed class ToastHandlerTask : IBackgroundTask
    {
        public void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
        {
            //Retrieve and consume the pre-defined
            //arguments and user inputs here
            var details = taskInstance.TriggerDetails as NotificationActionTriggerDetails;
            var arguments = details.Arguments;
            var input = details.Input.Lookup("1");
            // ...
        }
    }
}


For more information on working with adaptive and interactive notifications, see the corresponding tile and notification command article .

Implement adaptive living tiles


Similar to notifications, when working with live tiles in Windows 10 , you also have the flexibility to render tiles through the markup language. Previously, you had to select a tile template from the template catalog for previous versions of Windows. The adaptive nature of living tiles now allows you to group content so that Windows can automatically adjust the amount of information displayed on the tile to the screen of the current device.

As an example, in an application that displays letters on a live tile, you can decide to show a preview of one letter on a tile in small telephone screens and show a preview of two letters on large screens by simply grouping the letters in a single markup:

...
Jennifer ParkerPhotos from our tripCheck out these awesome photos I took while in New Zealand!Steve BosniakBuild 2015 DinnerWant to go out for dinner after Build tonight?
...




As shown in the example above, live tiles can now be fully defined in the markup, which is different from the previous approach of generating an image (from XAML) and sending it to display live tiles. Say you want a live tile to display an image cropped in a circle with two large captions at the bottom. You can easily describe it:

...
Hi,MasterHip
...




More details on working with adaptive tiles and the new markup language are described in the article “ Adaptive Tile Templates - Schema and Documentation ”.

New tip: spend some time customizing the live tiles of your application to please users.


We hope we were able to give a brief but sufficient overview of the improvements we have made to help you better interact with users through live tiles and notifications in Windows 10. Our new piece of tips:
  1. Think about how you can use the new live tile layout language in your application to make beautiful tiles that delight your users.
  2. If the information displayed on a tile can be grouped, make sure you use responsive tiles to adapt to the users of devices with high-resolution screens.
  3. Start using the new interactive notification features to expand your current notifications by adding more information and user interaction.

By the way, do not forget about the new activity “ It's ALIVE !!! ”In DVLUP, through which you can earn points and XP for updating your application (this is in addition to improving user experience).

Finally, below we provide links to additional resources for diving into the topic of this article. As always, we welcome your feedback on Twitter: @WindowsDev , use the hashtag # Win10x10.

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