Best practices for using push notifications, SMS, and e-mail in Windows Azure

After we delivered the iOS client library to mobile services in October, many people asked when to support iOS push notifications. As Scott Guthrie announced in Wednesday, Mobile services now supports sending iOS push notifications! By adding a simpler landing method, we have improved the iOS Client API; now configuring user authentication requires only a single http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/79237.html "> C code.

With this update, mobile services now have full support for Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, and IOS applications.

Since we now support three different ways of communicating with customers-push notifications, SMS via Twilio and email via SendGrid-across three platforms, this article will first cover iOS push basics and then turn to the basics of when and why to use them.

Scott's blog has all the details you need about pushing the door, but it's summed up in two great advantages:

In the video below, another member of the Mobile services team, Josh Twist, will show you these new sections:

Windowsazure

There are two wonderful tutorials available in the Mobile Development Center, the first to provide a basic walkthrough for configuring iOS Applications for push and send push service notifications, and the second details how to use tables to store APNs tags that can be used to send push notifications to users of an application.

You can also view our reference documentation for the full details of how to send push notifications using the APNs object.

When to use push service, email and SMS

Understanding how to use these push notifications is as important as when using push notifications when compared to email and SMS, and the simple answer depends on the application.

We will share some of the basic rules that we use as best practices, as well as examples that share some demonstration exceptions. We would like to hear some of your own best practices in the comments and discuss when to deviate from these best practices or your general guidelines more meaningful.

Push notification: Default value specification

Push notifications are created specifically for smartphones and applications. They are the most powerful and effective way to attract customer attention.

Note that the greater the responsibility, the greater the capacity. At first, most users will give you some leeway to allow push notifications. But they will soon withdraw the agreement.