The document discusses push notifications and provides an overview of popular push notification services. It recommends Parse, Urban Airship, and Azure Mobile Services as options. It covers the general setup process for enabling push on iOS and examples of using Parse and Urban Airship. Best practices discussed include providing value to users, driving engagement, and giving users control over notifications.

1. Xamarin
Seminar
Practical Push Notifications
28th February 2013

2. Introduction
Practical Push Notifications
Pierce Boggan
Software Engineering, Auburn University
Customer Support Engineer Intern
pierce@pierceboggan.com
Twitter: @pierceboggan
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3. Agenda
1. Why bother with push in the first place?
2. Identify a service that works for you and implement it.
3. Use push notifications effectively.
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4. Why Push?
1. If used correctly, it can provide value to your
application.
2. Push drives all of those awesome* analytical stats like
consecutive days used.
3. It really isn’t hard to implement, even for advanced
solutions.
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5. Platform Availability
Azure Mobile
Parse Urban Airship
Services
iOS X X X
OS X X
Android X X
Windows 8 X X X
Windows 8 Phone X X X
Blackberry X
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6. General Setup: iOS
• Enable Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)
• Export certificate as .p12
• Create a Provisioning Profile
•Development
•Distribution
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7. Usage: Parse
Advantages:
• Data, social, push, cloud code all in one service
• SDKs for many different platforms
• Parse Component from Xamarin’s Component Store
• Lots of documentation, tutorials, and samples
• Great pricing structure
• Simplistic API
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8. Urban Airship
Advantages:
• Established push notification platform
• SDKs for many different platforms
• Advanced targeting and metrics
• Lots of documentation and troubleshooting tips
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9. Azure Mobile Services
Advantages:
• Data, push, server-side scripting, and user authentication
• Azure Mobile Services Component
• Lots of documentation, video tutorials, samples
• Highly scalable
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10. Best Practices
1. Provide value.
2. Drive engagement.
3. Put the user in control.
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11. Final Remarks
•Plenty of other viable options
•PushSharp (see the Xamarin Seminar)
•Additional Reading
•Stop Abusing Push!
•10 Useful Tips for Awesome Push Notifications
•Urban Airship Whitepapers
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12. Questions?
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