Mobile-first development with Xamarin

18th of September, 2017 / / No Comments

 
Modern application users have high expectations for applications, even for in-house enterprise apps.  IT leaders realising this have adopted a mobile-first development approach, which ensures great user experience, reduce overall development and maintenance cost. In this post I will provide an example of a mobile-first development project for an enterprise application.
 Business case
A retailer is using Windows CE devices for performing daily tasks in it stores and is planning to move to the latest Android / iOS devices.… [Keep reading] “Mobile-first development with Xamarin”

Building websites with Ionic Framework, Angular and Microsoft Azure App Services

4th of September, 2017 / / 5 Comments

The Ionic Framework (https://ionicframework.com/) is an angular 4 based framework that is designed to build beautiful applications quickly and easily that can be targeted to native platforms as well as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).  In this blog post, I’ll walk through the steps to start your own Ionic PWA hosted on Azure App Services, which will then serve your application.

What is Microsoft Azure App Services?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform that allows you to host server workloads that you’d previously host locally in a data centre or on a server somewhere to be hosted in an environment where massive scale and availability becomes available at an hourly rate.… [Keep reading] “Building websites with Ionic Framework, Angular and Microsoft Azure App Services”

Mobile Application Management (MAM)

13th of September, 2016 / / 6 Comments

The biggest challenge for BYOD devices is data security and leakage, a common method to enforce data protection is through Exchange ActiveSync and/or Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools such as AirWatch, Intune and others.

Both ActiveSync and MDM comes with the option of device wipe and enforcing device PIN. If the device is lost or the employee is terminated, the company could remote wipe the device to protect its data. While device wipe is great from the company’s perspective, it is almost always met with resistance from the employees because everyone fears the company has the power to wipe their personal data such as photos and contacts from their own personal devices.… [Keep reading] “Mobile Application Management (MAM)”

Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections

31st of August, 2016 / / 2 Comments

This article describes a very easy and secure way of connecting your Azure Mobile Apps and Azure Web Apps to your existing on-premises infrastructure. The option is called Hybrid Connections and is a feature of Azure BizTalk Services. The feature does not require any VPN configuration or opening Inbound ports on the Firewall. After completion of a few simple configuration steps in the Azure Portal and installation of so-called Hybrid Connection Manager(HCM) program on your on-premises servers, you are ready to consume your on-premises services from your Cloud App right away.… [Keep reading] “Connecting Azure Mobile Apps and Web Apps to existing on-premises infrastructure using Azure Hybrid Connections”

Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples

9th of June, 2016 / / No Comments

Sometimes we need a simple solution that requires collecting data from multiple sources. The sources of data can be IoT devices or systems working on different platforms and in different places. Traditionally, integrators start thinking about implementation of a custom centralised REST API with some database repository. This solution can take days to implement and test, it is very expensive and requires hosting, maintenance, and support. However, in many cases, it is not needed at all.… [Keep reading] “Using Microsoft Azure Table Service REST API to collect data samples”

Configuring Intune Service to Service Connector for Exchange Online with a Service Account

4th of May, 2016 / / 2 Comments

If you are considering the use of Intune Conditional Access with Exchange Online it is generally recommended that you configure the Intune Service to Service Connector.  While it is not mandatory, it does provide your Intune Administrators the ability to report on the effectiveness of the Conditional Access Policies on your mobile ActiveSync clients within your Exchange Online environment.  In addition, if you wanted to enforce the use of the Outlook iOS/Android app using Exchange ActiveSync policies, as per my previous blog post here, setting up the connector would allow you to configure the ActiveSync access rules straight from the Intune Admin Portal.… [Keep reading] “Configuring Intune Service to Service Connector for Exchange Online with a Service Account”

Inter-App Communications in Xamarin.iOS and Why OpenUrl Freezes for 10+ sec

9th of March, 2016 / / No Comments

Inter-App Communications

Mobile apps are meant to communicate using multiple channels, but the most popular, recommended, and widely used is using Scheme Uri. If you have not used Scheme URI then you should consider adding them to your app, it takes less than a minute to add support to your app, and it provides you a great way to get users to your app.

Setting the Stage

One scenario that I had was App A was launching App B and querying data, App B was in turn looking up the request, and returning data to App A.… [Keep reading] “Inter-App Communications in Xamarin.iOS and Why OpenUrl Freezes for 10+ sec”

A Journey of Hunting Memory Leaks in Xamarin

8th of March, 2016 / / 2 Comments

My client was reporting performance issues with an existing app that was developed internally, and I had to find the problems. So, here is my journey on finding the issues and resolving them. The resolution was a reduction of the memory usage to 1/4 of what it was and usage was stabilised to this level (1/4). I am hopeful that this blog post can help you too in refining your app and pro-actively resolving any performance issues.… [Keep reading] “A Journey of Hunting Memory Leaks in Xamarin”

Any device, any platform, one Microsoft

29th of February, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Only a few years ago you’d have been hard pressed to have mentioned the following four words in a single blog post where you weren’t arguing for / against a way of doing things: Microsoft, iOS, Android and development.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you will no doubt have seen Microsoft’s announcement on their intent to acquire Xamarin, a business very much about cross-platform application development.

For those of us working in this space this has really been a case of
“what took you so long?”… [Keep reading] “Any device, any platform, one Microsoft”

Taking Advantage of The (iOS 9) Universal Links on Xamarin iOS apps

3rd of November, 2015 / / 3 Comments

What is Scheme URI?

In the context of mobile apps, Scheme URIs are used for communicating between mobile apps. Mobile developers can register a unique URI for each app in the application manifest (info.plist). The operating system would then use that to launch your application once the user clicks on a link that matches your uri. For instance, I could have my-cool-app:// as my scheme uri. I could then generate links (should start with my-cool-app://) to send in my email to my app’s users and once clicked, my app will be launched.… [Keep reading] “Taking Advantage of The (iOS 9) Universal Links on Xamarin iOS apps”