Notification Architecture

Question

Hi everyone,

With the arrival of WP7, I developed a solution to business appointments. And I wonder about the architecture. My Silverlight application needs to communicate with web services, no problem here.

By cons, I have another need that is a push to notify phones with the Microsoft Notification Push Service. My problem is how to handle this server side.

1. First problem, IIS has a timeout and I need to push to ensure WP7 if an appointment.
2. Second problem, there will be a lot of appointments.

I thought of an IIS / WAS to host the WCF services and a Windows service that handles notifications Push, for each new appointment creates a timer to send the push.

Have you an idea of architecture for this solution? Do you know a server / library planning?

Best regards,

Vincent BOUZON

Answer 1

I'm not entriely sure what your question is but it may be useful to clarify the following:

Push notification messages will not have guaranteed delivery.

If you need to guarantee adding appointments to a persons device, so they don't miss any business appointments, why not have the person subscribe to a shared calendar and remotely update the calendar from the server? Or send a meeting request via Exchange/email?

With regard to the volume of appointments, you can send up to 500 notifications per app, per device, per day. I don't think you'll reach that limit in terms of physical meeting appointments. Not unless you have some VERY busy people.

In terms of a process on a web server sending the messages, you could also consider having an Azure Worker Role generating the messages.

Answer 2

Here's a very timely Channel9 video on push notifications that's probably worth watching.