Windows Push Notification Service (commonly referred to as Windows Notification Service or WNS) is a

notification service A notification service provides means to send a notice to many persons at once. For example, if a flood were likely, residents of a community could be warned it's time to evacuate. If a school were suddenly closed for the day, students or paren ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

for all devices running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

platforms. It allows for developers to send push data ("toast" and "tile" updates) to Windows and

Universal Windows Platform Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and first introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile (discontinued), Windo ...

applications which implement the feature. Designed as a successor to the Microsoft Push Notification Service, it was first supported on

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

and subsequently on

Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1 is the discontinued third generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8. Rolled out at Microsoft's Build Conference in San Francisco, California, on April 2, 2014, it was released ...

upon its release.

Technical details

Design and compatibility

The Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) was designed as a successor to the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS), which was only supported natively on the

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was s ...

Operating System. Developers can still use the MPNS on apps that are installed on newer versions of

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

(

), but only if the Windows application was already registered to use the MPNS and has been converted to a

Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. W ...

application and modified to re-target the new platform. In 2015, Microsoft announced that the WNS would be expanded to utilize the

architecture, allowing for push data to be sent to

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

Windows 10 Mobile Windows 10 Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. First released in 2015, it is a successor to Windows Phone 8.1, but was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC operating system Windows 10. Wind ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

, as well as other supported platforms using universal API calls and POST requests. During the 2015 Build keynote,

announced a

bridge that would allow Android and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

software to be ported to

and published to the

Windows Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...

. In August 2015, A version of the Microsoft Android bridge toolset was reported to be leaked and available on the internet along with its documentation. The leaked toolset required developers to register and use the WNS to send notification data to ported applications, and would not allow for

Google Cloud Messaging Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) was a mobile notification service developed by Google that enables third-party application developers to send notification data or information from developer-run servers to applications that target the Google Androi ...

to be used instead. Microsoft later discontinued the Android bridge project in favor of continuing support for iOS application porting instead. During the 2016 Build keynote, Microsoft announced an update to the WNS and the

Operating System that will allow for Android and iOS devices to forward push notifications received to

to be viewed and discarded.

Architecture

The architecture of the Windows Push Notification Service is similar to that of its predecessor, in that it consists of servers and interfaces that generate, maintain, store, and authenticate unique identifiers (called ''Channel URI Identifiers'') for all devices that register to use the service. When a device enrolls to receive data and notification information using the WNS, it first sends a device registration request to the WNS network. The WNS network acknowledges the request, and responds with the device's unique ''Channel URI Identifier''. Typically, the device will then send its identifier to a server owned by the developer so that it can be stored and used for sending notifications. When the app developer wishes to transmit a notification or other WNS data to the device, it will transmit a POST request to the WNS network. The network will acknowledge and authenticate the request. If the authentication succeeds, the data to be transmitted is enqueued and then sent to the device from the WNS network using the ''Channel URI Identifier''.

References

External links

* {{Good article Windows technology .NET Push technology Windows APIs