Use WNS for windows phone 8

Question

Is WNS available for windows phone 8 devices. If yes, where can I find some good documentation to use it.

I was about to use MPNS but here it says Microsoft is Sunsetting MPNS from Windows Phone 8.1. But when I looked for the documentation, it looks like it is not available yet to use with windows phone apps.

Please help.

Answer 1

The official MPNS documentation (which was updated this month) still states that MPNS applies to Windows Phone 8.1.

Push notifications for Windows Phone 8

May 10, 2014

Applies to: Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 | Windows Phone OS 7.1

The Microsoft Push Notification Service in Windows Phone is an asynchronous, best-effort service that offers third-party developers a channel to send data to a Windows Phone app from a cloud service in a power-efficient manner.

However, this MSDN page, which was updated on the same date as the previous quote, says you can choose either MPNS or WNS for Windows Phone 8.1 apps.

Choosing MPNS or WNS for a Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 app

May 10, 2014

When building a Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 app, you have a choice to make about what push notification service your app will use. A push notification service is an asynchronous service that provides a channel you can use to send data from a cloud service to your app in a power-efficient manner. In Windows Phone 8, the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS) was the push notification platform you could use. In Windows Phone 8.1, the Windows Notification Service (WNS) is now supported. This is the same service used by all Windows Store apps. You can use either platform in a Silverlight 8.1 app. This topic gives you the information you need to make an informed decision about which notification service platform to use in your Silverlight 8.1 app.

So if you are creating a new Windows Phone app for Windows Phone 8.1, you are advised to use WNS, which has more features :

The following lists some of the benefits of using WNS and the Windows Runtime APIs for tiles, toast and badges in your Silverlight 8.1 app.

• Notifications are delivered within 5 seconds to devices connected to a network

• No more certifications to manage. WNS uses OAuth instead of SSL certification.

• The same service and APIs can be used for all Windows Phone Store apps, offering the potential for code sharing/reuse and lower maintenance costs.

• Periodic polling - Update tiles and badges by periodically polling for content updates from a cloud service.

• Tile notification queue - The ability of a tile to display a rotation of up to 5 updates.

• Larger tile template catalog - Over 40 templates to choose a tile layout suited to your needs.

• Raw notifications - The ability to wake up your app or start a background task by sending it a raw notification.

• Expiration time on a tile update - By setting an expiration time, the tile will revert to its default.

• Manage your toast notifications in action center - You can use the new APIs to send notifications directly into action center, categorize notifications and selectively remove and replace notifications in action center.