Time-based notifications on Windows Azure

Question

I have been building a Windows Phone 8 app and Windows Azure cloud service that will allow people to store schedules in the cloud. I have implemented a single sign on system and a cloud service used to store the schedule items.

I have also started building a cloud service to send push notifications however the plan is to send notifications based on scheduled times that have been stored in the cloud, the notification system works however only if I send a notification with a tester application.

Does anyone know how to send notifications based on a time record in an SQL database on Azure?

Thanks

Answer 1

As far as i understand you want a user to make a todoitem with a timestamp.?

If this is true, you could do it in some different ways. The easiest and most expensive is to only use azure. Then you need to use azure scheduler, to compare a time stamp with the current time and when the current time exceeds the time stamp, you send a push notification.

A cheaper way is to have an old pc, where you install server capabilities and go to the server and check the database with the time stamp. And then invoke a server api when you have a match.

But be aware of timezones :)

A link about timestamp in Azure tables

How to use Windows Azure Table Storage Timestamp or Etag field

Answer 2

Are you referring to the Azure Scheduler in Mobile Services?

Check out this link.

Otherwise I believe you'd need to have a service running that will run a task on scheduled times and occasionally poll the database for new times to run (pretty simple to do. Sounds like you probably have most of that already).