Updating an Application Tile Using a Shell Tile Schedule

You saw how to specify the background image of an application tile using push notification. There is, however, an alternative approach that lets you set the background image to a remote URI without using push notification, eliminating the need for a cloud service to issue tile notifications.

By using the ShellTileSchedule class the phone can be directed to periodically download an image from a remote server.

To create a schedule for a tile update, create a new instance of the ShellTileSchedule class and set the RemoteImageUri property, as shown in the following example:

Click here to view code image

string url = "http://www.example.com/ImageName.png";
ShellTileSchedule schedule = new ShellTileSchedule
{
    Interval = UpdateInterval.EveryHour,
    MaxUpdateCount = 10,
    Recurrence = UpdateRecurrence.Interval,
    RemoteImageUri = new Uri(url),
    StartTime = DateTime.Now
};
schedule.Start();

The following is a list of ShellTileSchedule properties that affect the download frequency:

Interval—This property specifies the download frequency rate and is of type Microsoft.Phone.Shell.UpdateInterval. UpdateInterval is an enumeration with the following values:

EveryHour

EveryDay

EveryWeek

EveryMonth

If the shortest frequency, EveryHour, does not offer a short enough interval, push notification or a background agent should be considered instead.

MaxUpdateCount—This property defines the number of times the schedule runs. If this value is not set or set to a number less than 1, the schedule runs indefinitely. This value is ignored if Recurrence is set to OneTime.

Recurrence—This property specifies whether the image is to be fetched periodically, or if retrieval of the image is to occur only once. The available values are UpdateRecurrence.Interval or UpdateRecurrence.OneTime.

RemoteImageUri—This property is the fully qualified URI of the background image. It cannot point to a local image stored on the phone.

StartTime—This property specifies the duration from the initial ShellTileSchedule.Start method call until the first time that the image is fetched. This property is used to delay the initial download of an image.