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Updated Wiki: Documentation

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:31:01 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

During the early previews of Windows 8, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 provided developers with the first support for building backend services for Windows Store apps using Windows Azure. The main areas of feedback we received from mobile developers was that they wanted a turn-key set of services for common functionality such as notifications, auth, and data. Windows Azure Mobile Services directly reflects this feedback by enabling developers to simply provision, configure, and consume scalable backend services. The downloads for this toolkit will be removed on the week of Feb 1st 2013. Future improvements will be channeled into Windows Azure Mobile Services rather than this toolkit.

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Maximize the potential of your Windows Metro style app with Windows Azure. Building a cloud service to support rich Windows Metro style apps is even easier with the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. This toolkit has all the tools to make it easy to develop a Windows Azure service and deploy it to your users. In addition to documentation, this toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for a sample Metro style app and a Windows Azure cloud project. This tool is designed to accelerate development so that developers can start enabling Windows 8 features, such as notifications, for their app with minimal time and experience. Use this toolkit to start building and customizing your own service to deliver rich Metro style apps

Windows Azure
Windows Azure is a cloud-computing platform that lets you run applications and store data in the cloud. Instead of having to worry about building out the underlying infrastructure and managing the operating system, you can simply focus on building your application and deploying it to Windows Azure. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, networking, and content delivery capabilities.

For more information about Windows Azure, visit the Windows Azure website. For developer focused training material, download the Windows Azure Training Kit or view the online Windows Azure Training Course.

Key Technologies

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

As a brief preview to the toolkit check out this 4 minute video to see how you can get a jump start using Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 to send Push Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Push Notification Service (WNS). This demonstration uses the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 that includes full end to end scenario for Toast, Tile and Badge notifications.

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Home

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:30:51 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Key Technologies

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Home

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:22:20 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Key Technologies

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Home

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:21:27 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone provided developers with the first iteration of support for building backend services for Windows Phone apps using Windows Azure. The main areas of feedback we received from mobile developers was that they wanted a turn-key set of services for common functionality such as notifications, auth, and data. Windows Azure Mobile Services directly reflects this feedback by enabling developers to simply provision, configure, and consume scalable backend services. The downloads for this toolkit will be removed on the week of Feb 1st 2013 and all future improvements will be channeled into Windows Azure Mobile Services rather than this toolkit.

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Key Technologies

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Documentation

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:48 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Appendix III: How to Deploy Margie’s Travel sample to Windows Azure

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:29 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

How to Deploy the Margie’s Travel Sample to Windows Azure

The following section will guide you through the process of configuring and deploying the Margie’s Travel sample to Windows Azure.

Configuring Access Control namespace

Create an ACS namespace; please refer to the walkthrough here.
Create the identity providers you want to support from the Identity providers item on the left menu.
Create a new relying party for the Margie’s Travel portal by providing your Windows Azure hosted service account information as depicted below. Make sure that the Token Format is set to SWT.
Select which identity providers you want to support.
Generate a signing key.
Now, create a new relying party for the bouncer service making sure that you also set the Token Format as SWT.
Select the list of identity providers you want to support.
In the Token Signing Settings section, provide the same key generated for the Margie’s Travel portal relying party instead of generating a new one.
On the left menu, click the Rule groups item and go to the rule associated for both relying parties on the right panel.
On the Edit Rule Group page, click Generate.
Select all the identity providers from the list and click Generate.

Configuring the Margie’s Travel Portal

Open the MargiesTravel.sln solution in Visual Studio.
Open the Web.Config file located in MargiesTravel.Web project.
Locate the audienceUris section and replace the local Uris by the ones you created in ACS.
Locate the wsFederation section and replace the issuer and realm values:
Locate the certificateReference section and replace the Windows Azure DevFabric thumbprint with the one associated with your hosted service:

Note: You must have uploaded an SSL certificate to Windows Azure portal.
Locate the trustedIssuers section and provide your hosted service URL as the name and the token signing key for the thumbprint attribute:
Open the ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg file inside the MargiesTravel.Cloud project and replace the local storage account information for you Windows Azure storage account and replace the WNS information with the values provided by the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect portal:

Note: You can grab your Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect information from https://manage.dev.live.com/build.
Replace the thumbprint on the Certificate node by the one associated with your hosted service:
Open the NotificationService.cs file located into the App_Data folder on the MargiesTravel.Web project and provide the connection string for your Windows Azure storage account:
Open the Index.cshtml located inside the Views/MyTrips folder and provide replace the values as depicted below:
Deploy the project to Windows Azure

Configuring Margie’s Travel Client

Open the MargiesTravel.Client solution
Open the security.js file inside the js folder and replace the following variables with you hosted service and ACS configuration as depicted below:
Open the common.js file inside the js folder and replace the local Url with your hosted service Url:

Updated Wiki: Appendix II: How to Obtain Namespace and Management Keys?

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:22 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

How to Obtain Namespace and Management Keys

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 ACS sample contains a setup tool that automates the ACS namespace configuration to allow the sample to run. By running it, the application will be ready to authenticate users from Windows Live ID, Google and Yahoo right out of the box.

In order to accomplish this, you need to have an active subscription with ACS; furthermore, the setup tool needs to acquire some information about your ACS namespace.

If you need to create an ACS namespace, please refer to the walkthrough here. Note that you only need to follow the sections titled “Accessing the AppFabric Portal” and “Service Namespace Creation”; the setup tool will take care of the rest for you.

The ACS Namespace field expects the unique string you chose as your namespace.

The Management Key can be obtained by going to https://{MYNAMESPACE}.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/mgmt/web/ServiceAccount/ManagementKey/Edit. Make sure to substitute {MYNAMESPACE} with your ACS namespace, then click Symmetric Key and copy the content of the Key field.

Updated Wiki: Appendix I: How to Deploy Your Services to Windows Azure?

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:13 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

How to Deploy Your Services to Windows Azure

In order to deploy the toolkit services generated by the Windows 8 Cloud Application project template to a Windows Azure Hosted Service, please follow these steps:

Create a Certificate

Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt as an administrator.
Change the directory to the location where you want to save the certificate file.
Type the following command, making sure to replace <YourDnsPrefix> with your hosted service URL:
Command

makecert -sky exchange -r -n "CN=<YourDnsPrefix>.cloudapp.net" -pe -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My "<YourDnsPrefix>.cloudapp.net.cer"

Note: The makecert tool will both create the .cer file and register the certificate in your Personal Certificates store. For more information, check the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432987.aspx.

Export the PFX File

Open the Certificate Manager snap-in for the management console by typing certmgr.msc in the Start menu.
The new certificate was automatically added to the personal certificate store. Export the certificate by right-clicking it, pointing to All Tasks, and then clicking Export.
On the Export Private Key page, make sure to select Yes, export the private key.
Choose a name and export the file to a .pfx file.
Click Next to complete the wizard.

Note: You now have a copy of the certificate (.pfx) with the private key. For more information, check the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432987.aspx.

Upload the PFX File to Windows Azure

Open a browser, go to the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal at https://windows.azure.com and log in with your credentials.
Select Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN and then Hosted Services.
Expand your hosted service project, and select the Certificates folder.
Click Add Certificate.
Click Browse and select the PFX file you saved previously. Enter the password, and then click Create.
Once you upload the certificate to the hosted service, copy the Thumbprint shown in the Properties pane for later use.

Update and Deploy to Windows Azure

In the Windows Azure Project, double-click the web role (e.g. WindowsCloudApp1.Web) to open its properties window.
In the Service Configuration drop down list, select the Cloud configuration
Select the Settings tab and update the DataConnectionString and Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString to point to your production storage account.
Select the Certificates tab, and set the SslCertificate property value to the Thumbprint you recorded earlier in the Windows Azure portal. This will replace the thumbprint for the localhost certificate with the thumbprint of the certificate you uploaded to your hosted service.
Add the .cer file to your Web application project. To do this, right-click the Web application project, choose Add Existing Item, select the .cer file created previously, and then add it to the project.
Open the .cer file properties and make sure that the Build Action is set to Content.
In the App_Start folder, open the NotificationService.cs file.

Add the following using sentences to the file:

using System.Linq; 
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime;

Copy the following snippet into the top of the PreStart method:

// This code sets up a handler to update CloudStorageAccount instances when their corresponding 
// configuration settings change in the service configuration file. 
CloudStorageAccount.SetConfigurationSettingPublisher((configName, configSetter) => 
{ 
  // Provide the configSetter with the initial value 
  configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName));

  RoleEnvironment.Changed += (sender, arg) => 
  { 
    if (arg.Changes.OfType<RoleEnvironmentConfigurationSettingChange>() 
        .Any((change) => (change.ConfigurationSettingName == configName))) 
    { 
      // The corresponding configuration setting has changed, propagate the value 
      if (!configSetter(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(configName))) 
      { 
        // In this case, the change to the storage account credentials in the 
        // service configuration is significant enough that the role needs to be 
        // recycled in order to use the latest settings. (for example, the 
        // endpoint has changed) 
        RoleEnvironment.RequestRecycle(); 
      } 
    } 
  }; 
});

In the same method, locate the code that assigns the endpoint repository to the c.StorageProvider property. Replace that code with the following to use the storage account defined in the configuration settings:

c.StorageProvider = new WindowsAzureEndpointRepository(CloudStorageAccount.FromConfigurationSetting("DataConnectionString"));

Now you can publish your Windows Azure project to your hosted service. You can do this from the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal or directly from Visual Studio 2010.

Update your Windows Metro Style App to Consume your Windows Azure Hosted Service

Updating your Windows Metro style app to consume your deployed services is simple. When the app is running, all you need to do is update the Server URL within the client UI to https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/<YourDefinedNotificationEndpoint>.

In the event that you are using a self-signed certificate for testing purposes, it is important to establish a trust relationship between your client and server. This requires some additional configuration steps in the client app. Note that this would not be necessary when using a certificate from a trusted root authority.

In your client project, right-click your project and select Add Existing Item.
Go to the location of your self-signed certificate (e.g. certdemo.cloudapp.net.cer).
Select the .cer certificate file and click Add.
Open the .cer file properties and make sure that the Build Action is set to Content.
Double-click the package.appmanifest and select the Declarations tab.
Select Certificates in the Available Declarations drop down list and then click Add.
Select AutoSelect.
In the Certificates group, click Add New.
In the Store Name text box, type root.
In the Content text box, type <YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net.cer (e.g. certdemo.cloudapp.net.cer).
Your application is now ready to build and run.

Updated Wiki: ACS Windows Metro Sample

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:00:05 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

ACS Windows Metro Sample

The toolkit also includes a Windows Metro sample application to demonstrate how you can use ACS for your Windows Metro style application. You can find it in the Samples\ACS folder.

The sample contains two different solution files:

ModernCloudIdentity\ModernCloudIdentity.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 2010 and contains the projects related to the Windows Azure web role.
ACSMetroClient\ACSMetroClient.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 11 and contains the Windows Metro style application project.

Important: ACS Sample

Before running the ACS sample, you will need to update your Access Control Service Namespace information in the configuration files. To do this, perform the following steps:

Double-click the SetupSample.cmd file located inside the Samples\ACS folder to launch a tool that will help you in the process of configuring the sample.
Obtain your ACS namespace and its management key. To do this, you can follow the instructions in How to Obtain Namespace and Management Keys.
Enter your Access Control service namespace and the symmetric key you obtained in the first step.
If you want to configure Facebook as Identity Provider, enter your Facebook Application ID and Application Secret; otherwise, press ENTER.
Wait until the tool finishes configuring your sample.

Note: For more information about configuring relying party applications in the ACS Management Portal, see the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg185906.aspx
If you see a User Account Control dialog box, click Yes.
Press ENTER to complete the setup.

Running the ACS Sample

Open Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator.
Note: At the time of writing, only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled.
Open the ModernCloudIdentity.sln solution located in the Samples\ACS\ModernCloudIdentity folder.
Make sure that the start-up project of the solution is the cloud project. To set the start-up project, right-click the ModernCloudIdentity project in Solution Explorer and select Set as StartUp Project.
Press F5 to launch the application in the compute emulator and open a browser window that shows its start page.
Now, open Visual Studio 11 and open the ACSMetroClient.sln solution located in the Samples\ACS\ACSMetroClient folder.
Press F5 to launch the Metro style client application. In the start page, click Touch Here to Sign In to start the log in procedure.
Click to select an identity provider from the list.
Sign in using your credentials for the selected identity provider.
Once you successfully log in using ACS, the application shows its main page. Click Invoke to access the secured OAuth service endpoint and verify that the Results panel shows the expected response.

Updated Wiki: Margie’s Travel

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:59:57 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Margie’s Travel

Running the Margie’s Travel Sample

Margie’s Travel is a sample travel application that demonstrates how you can track and manage your trips across multiple Windows 8 machines using a combination of technologies in Windows Azure and Windows 8. The application is a Metro styled app built on HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

The application does not require setting up. To run this sample, you must run both the client and the server application projects.

Note: This sample uses federated authentication to validate the credentials of the application’s users. Once a user has been authenticated, the information retrieved from the claims issuer is stored in a cookie to avoid repeating the logon process. In its present form, the sample sends this cookie in unencrypted form.

It is recommended that the cookie be encrypted for production applications. Please consider this if you plan to deploy the Margie's Travel sample to Windows Azure. For more information, refer to the ACS Security Guidelines (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg185962.aspx).

Open Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator.
Note: At the time of writing, only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled.
Open the MargiesTravel.sln solution located in the Samples\MargiesTravel folder.
Make sure that the start-up project of the solution is the cloud project. To set the start-up project, right-click the MargiesTravel.Cloud project in Solution Explorer and select Set as StartUp Project.
Press F5 to launch the application in the compute emulator and open a browser window that shows its start page.
Click login to show the list of configured identity providers.
Click the identity provider of your choice and then sign in using your credentials.

Note: Windows Live ID does not return claim with the user name. If you use this identity provider to sign in, the text shown in the upper right shows a string with your name identifier.
Now, open Visual Studio 11 and open the MargiesTravel.Client.sln solution located in the Samples\MargiesTravel folder.
Press F5 to launch the Metro style client application. Notice that the UI of the client Metro application is the same as the UI in the server, with both screens constructed using HTML.
In the client application, click login to show the list of configured identity providers.
Click the identity provider of your choice and then sign in using your credentials.
Click any of the trips listed to view information about it.
The cloud application also includes some rudimentary capabilities that allow you to test sending notification messages to registered clients. To, test notifications, type https://127.0.0.1/upgrade in the address bar of the browser and press ENTER.
The browser displays a page that lists all registered clients. Verify that the list includes the Margies.Travel.Client.App client. Click the button labeled “Upgrade for (…)” in the Margies.Travel.Client.App row to upgrade and send a notification to this client.
After a brief pause, you should receive a toast message with information about the upgrade.

Note: To send notifications messages, you require a valid authentication token. If a token expires, you will not be able to send notifications. If you have trouble with these feature, sign in again to refresh the token.

Updated Wiki: Push Notification Worker Sample

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:59:49 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Push Notification Worker Sample

The toolkit includes a sample application based on the same solution structure as the one created by the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services project template. The sample demonstrates how to off-load the job of sending Windows Push Notifications using a Windows Azure worker role. You can find the source code in the Samples\PNWorker folder. This folder contains a full version of the sample application showing how to use Windows Push Notifications using ASP.NET Membership as the authentication mechanism.

The sample contains two different solution files:

WATWindows.Azure.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 2010 and contains the projects related to the Windows Azure web and worker roles.
WATWindows.Client.sln: This solution must be opened with Visual Studio 11 and contains the Windows Metro style application project.

Note: At the time of writing, only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled.

Important: Setting up the PNWorker Sample

Before running the PNWorker sample, you need to register the application and configure it. To do this, follow these steps:

To register your application, go to the Windows Live Application Management site for Metro style apps at https://manage.dev.live.com/build and sign in with your Windows Live ID.
In the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect page, enter the following information and click I Accept to submit the registration form.

Package Display Name

PNWorker.Sample

Publisher

CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric
Once you register the application, make a note of the values shown in the portal for Client Secret, Package Name and Package SID.
Now, double-click the SetupSample.cmd file located inside the Samples\PNWorker folder to launch a tool that will guide you through the process of configuring the sample.
If you see a User Account Control dialog box, click Yes.
Note: The next part of the setup runs a PowerShell script that requires running with administration privileges to allow the scripts to execute in your machine.
When prompted, enter the Client Secret, Package Name, and Package Security Identifier you obtained previously and wait until the tool finishes configuring your sample.
Press ENTER to complete the setup.

Running the PNWorker Sample

To run this sample, you must run both the client and the server application projects.

Open Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator.
Note: At the time of writing, only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled.
Open the WATWindows.Azure.sln solution located in the Samples\PNWorker folder.
Make sure that the start-up project of the solution is the cloud project. To set the start-up project, right-click the WATWindows project in Solution Explorer and select Set as StartUp Project.
Press F5 to launch the application in the compute emulator and open a browser window that shows its start page.
Now, open Visual Studio 11 and open the WATWindows.Client.sln solution located in the Samples\PNWorker folder.
Press F5 to launch the Metro style client application.
Next, in the client application, click Reopen channel and send to server. Once the application opens the channel and registers it with the cloud application, observe that the Output area shows the channel URI.
Return to the browser window showing the Push Notifications page and refresh it. Notice that the UI now lists the newly registered client.
You may now send notifications to the client application by clicking the Send Notification button. To learn how to use this feature, see Using the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services Application.

Updated Wiki: Raw Notifications Sample

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:58:25 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Raw Notifications Sample – C# and JavaScript

In addition to the notification samples described previously, the toolkit also includes two sample applications—one written in C# and XAML and another written in HTML and JavaScript—that show how to send and receive raw notifications, as well as toast, badge, and tile notifications. Raw notifications are push notifications with no associated UI that perform a background task for the application. These samples do not use ACS-secured endpoints and are simpler to set up.

You can find the source code for the C# and Javascript samples in the Samples\RawNotifications.CSharp and Samples\RawNotifications.JS folders, respectively.

Important: Setting up the Raw Notifications Sample

Before running these samples, you need to follow the steps described below to register the Metro style application.

To register your application, go to the Windows Live Application Management site for Metro style apps at https://manage.dev.live.com/build and sign in with your Windows Live ID.
In the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect page, enter the following information and click I Accept to submit the registration form.
For the C# sample:

Package Display Name

RawNotifications.CSharp

Publisher

CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric

For the JavaScript sample:

Package Display Name

RawNotifications.JS

Publisher

CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric
Once you register the application, make a note of the values shown in the portal for Client Secret, Package Name and Package SID.
Now, open the Configuration.xml file in the Samples\RawNotifications.CSharp folder for the C# project or the Samples\RawNotifications.JS folder for the JavaScript project in a text editor.
Locate the Notifications section and replace the placeholders for ClientSecret, PackageName, and PackageSID with the values obtained from the portal.
Execute the SetupSample.cmd script, also located in the Samples\RawNotifications.CSharp folder for the C# project or the Samples\RawNotifications.JS folder for the JavaScript project, to launch a tool that will configure the sample for you.
When prompted, confirm that you have entered the required information in the configuration file.
If you are prompted by a User Account Control dialog, click Yes.
Wait until the tool finishes configuring your sample.

Running the Raw Notifications Sample

To run these samples, you must run both the client and the server application projects.

Open Visual Studio 2010 as an administrator.
Note:

At the time of writing, only Visual Studio 2010 supports Windows Azure cloud projects so you currently need to use this edition to launch the server application. This will change in a future release of the Windows Azure tools when support for Visual Studio 11 is enabled.
Open the RawNotifications.Backend.sln solution located in the Samples\RawNotifications.CSharp folder for the C# project or in the Samples\RawNotifications.JS for the JavaScript project.
Make sure that the start-up project of the solution is the cloud project. To set the start-up project, right-click the RawNotifications.Backend project in Solution Explorer and select Set as StartUp Project.
Press F5 to launch the application in the compute emulator and open a browser window that shows its start page.
Now, open Visual Studio 11 and open the RawNotifications.CSharp.sln solution located in the Samples\RawNotifications.CSharp folder for the C# sample or in the Samples\RawNotifications.JS folder for the JavaScript sample.
Press F5 to launch the Metro style client application.
In the client application, click Register to send a request to Windows Push Notification Services (WNS) for opening a notification channel and registering it with the back end service running in the cloud project.
Once a channel is registered, the Registration Channel text area updates to show its URL.
Then, click Enable to request lock screen privileges. This allows the application to run in the background and is required for the application to receive raw notifications.
Return to the browser window showing the Push Notifications page and refresh it. Notice that the UI now lists the newly registered client.
You may now send notifications to the client application by clicking the Send Notification button. To learn how to use this feature, see Using the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services Application. The application lists the raw notifications it receives in reverse chronological order.
A background task can process raw notifications while the application is not running. To test this feature, close the application by using the close gesture or pressing Alt + F4.
Now, return to the cloud application and send one or more raw notifications.
Next, restart the application by pressing F5 in Visual Studio or by clicking its tile in the Start screen. When the application restarts, it will process all the notifications that it received while it was not running and show them in its UI.

Updated Wiki: Sample Metro App using Windows Azure Service Bus

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:58:06 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Sample Metro App using Windows Azure Service Bus

The Windows Azure Service Bus Sample browser application demonstrates how to send and receive messages from a Windows 8 Metro style application via Windows Azure Service Bus Queues, Topics and Subscriptions.

Windows Azure Service Bus Messaging provides cloud-based, message-oriented-middleware technologies including a full featured Message Queue with support for arbitrary content types, rich message properties, correlation, reliable binary transfer, and grouping. Service Bus Topics provide a set of new publish-and-subscribe capabilities and are based on the same backend infrastructure as Service Bus Queues. A Topic consists of a sequential message store just like a Queue, but allows for many concurrent and durable Subscriptions that can independently yield copies of the published messages to consumers. Each Subscription can define a set of rules with simple expressions that specify which messages from the published sequence are selected into the Subscription.

This sample consists of a sample library that creates an easy to use abstraction on top of the Windows Azure Service Bus REST APIs and a sample to demonstrate the usage of the Windows Azure Service Bus from a Windows 8 metro style using this sample library.

The remainder of this document will walk you through how to run the sample service bus application. If you would like to learn more about Service Bus and how the sample actually implement this functionality please read Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8 by Will Perry.

Important: Setting up the Windows Azure Service Bus Sample

Before running the application, you must first configure a Service Bus namespace and then configure the sample application to use this namespace. You can do this as follows.

Navigate to the Windows Azure portal. You will be prompted for your Windows Live ID credentials if you are not already signed in.
Click Service Bus, Access Control & Caching link in the left pane, and then select the Service Bus item under the Services element.
Add a Service Namespace. A service namespace provides an application boundary for each application exposed through the Service Bus and is used to construct Service Bus endpoints for the application. To add a service namespace, click the New button on the upper ribbon bar.
On the left list, check all the available services. Enter a name for your service Namespace, select a Region for your service to run in, choose the Subscription and a Cache Size a click Create Namespace. Make sure to validate the availability of the name first. Service names must be globally unique as they are hosted in the cloud and accessible by whomever you decide to grant access.

Record the Value of your ServiceNamespace as you will later use this to configure the sample application.
Once the namespace is active, click its name in the list of available namespaces to display the Service Namespace information page.
In the Properties right pane, locate the Service Bus section and click the Default Key View button.

Record the value shown for Default Issuer a Default Key, and click OK. You will need these values later when configuring your Web Role settings.

Now that you have your Service Namespace, Default Issuer and Default Key you are ready to configure the application.

Running the Windows Azure Service Bus Sample

Open Visual Studio 11.
Open the Microsoft.Samples.ServiceBus.Metro.sln solution located in the Samples\ServiceBus folder.
Open App.xaml.cs, in the Microsoft.Samples.ServiceBus.SampleBrowser project and set the values for the Service Namespace, Default Issuer and Default Key where indicated in the following image.
Make sure that the start-up project of the solution is the Metro style app project. To set the startup Project right-click on the Microsoft.Samples.ServiceBus.SampleBrowser project in Solution Explorer and select Set as StartUp Project.
Press F5 to run the application.
Select one of the three options and follow the steps within the application to learn about using Service Bus from within a Windows 8 metro app. The following options are available:
1. Simple Queues: Explore the basic functionality of a Service Bus Queue, including Create, Delete, Send and Receive operations. Please notice that Queue names must not contain spaces.
2. Simple Topics: Explore the basic functionality of a Service Bus Topic including Create, Subscribe, Send and Delete.
3. Peek Lock: Explore alternate receive semantics you can use when reading messages from Service Bus.

Updated Wiki: Using the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services Application

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:58 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Using the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services Application

You can create a cloud application that manages client channel registrations and can send push notifications using the Windows 8 Cloud Application project template. Several of the samples in this toolkit also take advantage of this application for their backend.

Sending Push Notifications

The following steps describe how to use the application to send notifications to registered clients.

Press F5 to launch the application in the compute emulator and open a browser window that shows its start page.
Click Log On and sign in to the application using the following credentials:

User name

admin

Password *

Passw0rd!

* Note that the password uses the zero character and that the user name is case sensitive.
In the application’s home page, click Push Notifications.
Unless you have executed the application previously, the Push Notifications page should currently display an empty list of clients.
Switch to your Metro style client application and register the channel. The mechanism used for registration will vary depending on the application. For example, in the PushNotifications sample, the client application includes a Register button for this purpose.
Return to the browser window and refresh the Push Notifications page. Notice that the page now lists the channel that you requested in the Metro app and registered with the web role. Click the Send Notification button located to the right of the row that shows the client’s channel. This will open a popup window with notification templates.
In the Push Notification popup window, select the Toast notification type from the drop down list and then choose one of its templates from the drop down list next to it, for example, ToastImageAndText01. Fill out the information required by the template, which may include images as well as text.
Now, press Send and verify that the application successfully delivers the notification request to the Windows Push Notification Services (WNS) by checking the status message shown immediately below the Send Notification button. Once the notification is sent, a toast should appear shortly thereafter with the information entered into the template.
To test tile notifications, click Send Notification again and choose the Tile notification type from the drop down list, then choose a template from the drop down list next to it, for example, TileWideImageAndText01. Fill out the information required by the template, which may include images as well as text, and then press Send.
Switch to the Start screen, for example by pressing the Windows key ( ), and verify that, after a brief pause, the application’s tile updates with the information that you entered into the template.
To test badge notifications, click Send Notification again and choose the Badge notification type from the drop down list, then choose one of the templates, either Int or Glyph, from the drop down list next to it. Fill out the information required by the template and then press Send.
Switch to the Start screen again and observe how the application’s tile updates to show the badge information that you entered into the template.
Finally, to test raw notifications, click Send Notification again and choose the Raw notification type from the drop down list, then choose the template Raw. Type the text that you want to send in the Content field, and then press Send.
Switch to the Metro Application and the Raw notifications field will be updated with text that you entered into the template.

Note: This concludes the overview of how to send Toast, Tile and Badge notifications using the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. As an exercise, it is recommended to spend some time exploring the rich set of templates available to each of the different notification types.

Uploading Tile Background Images

Windows Azure Blob Storage is a good option to store images that can be used as tile backgrounds for your Windows Notifications.

To manage these images, click the Blobs menu option to display the list of the preloaded tile backgrounds included with the toolkit. To upload a new image, click the Browse button at the bottom of the page:
Select an image to upload and then click the Open button.
Back in the Blobs page, click the Upload button. Once the upload has been processed, you will see the recently uploaded image listed in the page.
To delete an image, click Delete in the row that contains the image that you wish to remove.
After the server processes the request, verify that the page no longer lists the image that you removed.

Updated Wiki: Running the Windows 8 Cloud Application

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:49 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Running the Windows 8 Cloud Application

After creating a new Windows 8 Cloud Application project, follow these steps to walk through the sample application generated by the template.

Starting Windows Azure Services

Make sure that you do not have any Web site bound to ports 443 or 10080 in your local IIS.
Note: By default, the ASP.NET MVC 3 Web role generated by the project template is configured to run over two different endpoints: the first one uses HTTPS on port 443 and the second uses HTTP on port 10080.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Azure project, point to Debug and click Start new instance.

Creating a Windows Metro Style App (client)

Now, open Visual Studio 2011 and create a new JavaScript "Notifications + Access Control Application”.

Note: You can use either Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Beta or Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Windows 8. In this step, you can create a C# “Notifications + Access Control Application” instead.
Enter the package name obtained from the WNS and Live Connect portal and then click Next.
Enter the Registration endpoint URL and then click Next.
Leave the Use ACS Authentication option cleared and then click OK.
Once the solution opens, press F5.
In the client application, press Register. This will request a channel from WNS and submit it to your Windows Azure service running in your local Windows Azure compute emulator. In the Output section of the application, you will see that the Channel URI was sent successfully to your service.
You may now send notifications to the client application by clicking the Send Notification button. See Using the Windows 8 Cloud Application Services Application to learn how to use this feature.

Updated Wiki: Creating a New Windows 8 Cloud Application

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:38 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Creating a New Windows 8 Cloud Application

After installing the VSIX extension as explained in the Setup section, perform these steps:

Open Visual Studio 2010 as administrator (this is required to run Windows Azure projects).
In the File menu, point to New and then click Project.
In the Installed Templates list on the left of the New Project dialog, select Cloud under the Visual C# node, then select the Windows 8 Cloud Application template, enter the Name and Location of the solution, and then click OK.
In the first step of the New Windows 8 Cloud Application Project wizard, provide your Windows Azure Storage account information (name and key). To use the Storage Emulator instead, check the Use Storage Emulator option.
Click Next to proceed with the next step of the wizard.
In the second (and last) step of the wizard, you will need to provide the credentials for the application. If you have already registered your application, you can enter the values for the client secret and package SID in the corresponding fields of the wizard.
Otherwise, follow the link provided in the wizard page to go to the Windows Live Application Management site for Metro style apps at https://manage.dev.live.com/build and sign in with your Windows Live ID. In the Windows Push Notifications & Live Connect page, enter the Package Display Name and Publisher—you can copy both these values to the clipboard by clicking the corresponding links in the wizard page—and then submit the form. Once you register the application, copy the values provided by the portal for Client Secret and Package SID into the corresponding fields of the wizard. These are the WNS credentials for your cloud service. Record the value shown for Package Name for later use. You will need it to generate a sample Windows Metro style app.
Click OK and wait until Visual Studio finishes creating the projects.
Explore the generated solution. You should see the following projects:
- WindowsCloudApp1: Windows Azure project with an already configured web role.
- WindowsCloudApp1.Web: ASP.NET MVC 3 project configured as a web role containing the toolkit services and the administration pages.
Note: The project names might be different depending on the name you typed in the New Project dialog.

Updated Wiki: Project Templates, Samples and Libraries Source Code

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:25 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Project Templates, Samples and Libraries Source Code

Project Templates

This toolkit contains a project template for C#:

Windows 8 Cloud Application: This project template for Visual Studio generates a Windows Azure cloud project as well as an ASP.NET MVC 3 project that handles registrations from clients and can deliver push notifications to them.
Notification + Access Control Application: These client project templates for Visual Studio, available for both JavaScript and C# projects, make it easier for developers to create a Windows Metro Style application that utilizes services in Windows Azure.

Immediately, out of the box, the client and server projects integrate to enable push notifications with the Windows Push Notification Service (WNS). In addition, the Windows Azure project demonstrates how to use the Windows Push Notifications Recipe and how to leverage Windows Azure blob and table storage.

Samples Source Code

If you browse to the Samples folder, you will find the following folders:

ACS: An example of how to use ACS in your Windows Metro style applications.
MargiesTravel: A fictitious scenario to leverage NuGet packages for sending notifications and a Metro style application written in JavaScript.
Notifications.CSharp: A Windows Metro style sample application written in XAML and C# showing how to use the WinMD NuGet packages to register / unregister the application for notifications using an ACS secured notification endpoint.
Notifications.JS: A Windows Metro style sample application written in HTML and JavaScript showing how to use the WinMD NuGet packages to register / unregister the application for notifications using an ACS secured notification endpoint.
PNWorker: Source code for an application that demonstrates how to offload the job of sending Windows Push Notifications using a Windows Azure worker role.
RawNotifications.CSharp: A Windows Metro style sample application written in XAML and C# showing how to send and receive Raw Notifications.
RawNotifications.JS: A Windows Metro style sample application written in HTML and JavaScript showing how to send and receive Raw Notifications.
Service Bus: A Windows Metro style sample application written in XAML and C# showing how to send and receive messages via Windows Azure Service Bus Queues, Topics and Subscriptions.

Libraries & NuGets

Inside the Libraries folder you will also find the source code for all the libraries included in this toolkit packetized as NuGets:

ACSAuthentication: A WinMD library that provides an easy way to retrieve tokens from the Windows Azure Access Control Service leveraging the WebAuthenticationBroker class provided by the Windows Runtime and a “bouncer” service similar to the one included in the Notifications.CSharp and Notifications.JS samples. The NuGet package can be found at http://nuget.org/packages/Windows8.Identity.AccessControl
ACSAuthentication.CSharp: A XAML control written in C# to display the list of identity providers configured in ACS leveraging the Windows8.Identity.AccessControl NuGet. The NuGet package can be found at http://nuget.org/packages/Windows8.CSharp.Identity.AccessControl
ACSAuthentication.JS: An HTML control written in JavaScript to display the list of identity providers configured in ACS leveraging the Windows8.Identity.AccessControl NuGet. The NuGet package can be found at http://nuget.org/packages/Windows8.JS.Identity.AccessControl
ClientRecipe: A WinMD library to register / unregister with a push notification endpoint created by the WnsRecipe NuGet package. The NuGet package can be found at http://nuget.org/packages/Windows8.Notifications
WnsRecipe: Push notification server-side helper library that provides an easy way to send all three types of push notification messages supported by Windows Push Notification Services (WNS): Tile, Toast, and Badge. The NuGet package can be found at http://nuget.org/packages/WnsRecipe

Updated Wiki: Software Requirements

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:21 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Software Requirements

This section describes the software requirements for running this toolkit.

You must have the following components installed to run the project templates and the sample solutions included in this toolkit:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 RC or Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express RC for Windows 8
Internet Information Services 7 or higher
Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 4
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation Runtime
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (or higher)
Internet Explorer 9 (or any other modern Web browser supporting HTML5)

The Configuration Wizard included with this toolkit is used to check the dependencies, install certificates and install the VSIX files with the project templates. To launch it, go to the root installation folder, and double-click Setup.cmd.

Updated Wiki: Home

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:57:07 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Key Technologies

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Updated Wiki: Documentation

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:56:27 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 uses the following technologies:

ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET Web API
Windows Azure SDK 1.7
Windows Identity Foundation
Windows Push Notification Service (WNS)

Content

Learn More:

Videos:

To understand WNS, Windows Azure and Push Notifications watch the in-depth Build Conference Video with Darren Louie and Nick Harris

Delivering notifications using the Windows Push Notification Service and Windows Azure

Blogs:

Service Bus blog by Will Perry: Getting Started with the Service Bus Samples for Windows 8
Walkthrough of the Toolkit: Creating a Windows 8 Cloud Application
Nick Harris's Blog: Delivering Notifications with Windows Azure and the Windows Notification Service
Vittorio Bertocci's Blog: Using ACS in Metro Style Applications
Wade Wegner's Blog: Metro Style Apps with Windows Azure

Email:

watwindows8@microsoft.com

Package Display Name	PNWorker.Sample
Publisher	CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric

Package Display Name	RawNotifications.CSharp
Publisher	CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric

Package Display Name	RawNotifications.JS
Publisher	CN=127.0.0.1, O=TESTING ONLY, OU=Windows Azure DevFabric

User name	admin
Password *	Passw0rd!