Action Center In Universal Windows Apps

Action Center is a system area, where a user can have a settings panel (composite of several system settings) and notifications list, grouped by app, and ordered chronologically inside Action Center.

These are the notifications a user has missed or ignored  after swiping left to right on it.

User can access action center,

1. Mobile : Swiping down from top edge of the screen.
2. Desktop : Swiping left from right edge of the screen.

App can have a maximum of 20 notifications in their group. It follows the Queue format, and the last element is flushed out, once a new notification is pushed into the group.

Ideally an expiration date for a notification in the action center is 7 days, unless an earlier expiration time is specified during the creation of the toast.

Desktop



Mobile



There are various Action Center Management APIs available.

We can:

Remove one or many notifications.
Tag and group the notifications.
Replace a notification with a new one.
Set an expiration on the notifications.
Send "Ghost Toast" notifications (only show up in the notification center)

void RemoveNotificationHistory()
{
    ToastNotificationHistory tH = ToastNotificationManager.History;
    tH.Remove("My App toast 1");
    tH.RemoveGroup("Whatsapp");
}

App responsibilities on notification

Apps can inform the user of 'unread' items in ways(Count on tile, listed in Action Center).

App+Action Center+Tile(s) must tell a consistent story for a good experience.

 

• User taps on toast popup or in Action center>App opens at the corresponding item
• User opens app and reads unread items>Notification in Action Center are removed
• User dismisses Action Center Notification>Tile badge count changes

ToastNotificationHistoryChangesTrigger-Fires, whenever a user dismisses a notification from an Action Center or when an app adds or removes or replaces a notification.

Use to trigger a Background task, in which you can maintain consistency of un-actioned item counts in app state and on tiles.

public sealed class ActionCenterChangedTask: IBackgroundTask
{
    public void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
    {
        var toastNotifications = ToastNotificationManager.History.GetHistory();
        if (toastNotifications != null)
        {
            var toastCount = toastNotifications.Count;
            if (toastCount == 0)
            {
                BadgeUpdateManager.CreateBadgeUpdaterForApplication().Clear();
            } else
            {
                XmlDocument xmlBadge = BadgeUpdateManager.GetTemplateContent(BadgeTemplateType.BadgeNumber);
                XmlElement badgeElement = (XmlElement) xmlBadge.SelectSingleNode("/badge");
                badgeElement.SetAttribute("value", toastCount.ToString());
                BadgeNotification badgeNotification = newBadgeNotification(xmlBadge);
                BadgeUpdateManager.CreateBadgeUpdaterForApplication().Update(badgeNotification);
            }
        }
    }
}