Enterprise Administration App
[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]
The Contoso On-Demand administrative app idea book shows how businesses can use Windows 8 apps for enterprise administration. You can use the Contoso On-Demand administrative app to manage servers in your business including notifications, reporting, and responding to server issues.
You can gain inspiration for the design of your own enterprise app by reviewing the use cases in this topic and seeing how the Windows 8 Microsoft design language is utilized in the app.
Sample code available: You can download the code for the Contoso On-Demand app here.
Sample code available: You can download the XenApp manager app from the Windows store here.
Enterprise administration app scenarios
The Contoso On-Demand administrative app described in this topic uses Microsoft design features to make it easy for server administrators to monitor the health of Contoso servers and respond to server issues.
| Inform | Respond |
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Inform
You can use the Microsoft design language to draw users into your app using live tiles or toast notifications. You can group information together on a hub page and create a hierarchical navigation by providing links to more detailed pages.
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April is a system administrator at Contoso On-Demand, a video streaming service. Contoso On-Demand has an enterprise management app that April uses to monitor company servers and respond when needed. While at work, April regularly reviews live tiles for the enterprise management app for server status. When an event occurs requiring April's attention, she receives a toast notification about the issue.
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April opens the Contoso On-Demand administration app and reviews the information on the app dashboard page. She is presented with a graph that shows performance data and error count information.
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April swipes from the right to scroll to the content repositories section of the dashboard hub page. She reviews the server load distribution that she finds there.
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April swipes from the right again to review the number of concurrent user sessions.
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Summary of inform
In the first scenario, we see that...
- Live tiles draw users back into your app by displaying information that is relevant to the user.
- Toast notifications can deep link into your app and give the user an opportunity to re-engage with your content.
- Using the right navigation pattern helps your users navigate your app easily and intuitively.
For help choosing the best navigation pattern for your app, see Navigation patterns.
See the Flat navigation pattern in action as part of our App features, start to finish series.
For information on live tiles and toast notifications, see the following:
Respond
You can use the Microsoft design language to share information with other apps and to keep your app available using snapped view. Semantic zoom provides a powerful way to navigate your app by providing summarized views of the data.
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April swipes from the right edge and selects Share to send an e-mail to the system administrator lead, Bjorn, and notify him of the issue. The e-mail is automatically populated with information from the Contoso On-Demand administrative app.
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When Bjorn receives the e-mail, he is diagnosing a problem on a different computer. He opens the Contoso On-Demand administration app and reduces it to snapped view so that he can review the server details while continuing to work on his original task.
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Meanwhile, April is still addressing the issue with server load. From the dashboard hub page, April clicks on the Servers section of the hub page to navigate to the server detail page.
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April pinches to use semantic zoom to group the list of servers and selects the drop-down list to organize the grouped servers by state.
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April selects the group of loaded servers and is presented with the expanded list of servers under heavy load. April begins searching for servers that require attention.
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Summary of respond
In the second scenario, we see that...
- A fully-featured snap view lets your users extend their engagement with your app while multi-tasking.
- You can make your content into a Share source and Windows 8 connects you to other apps, email, and social networks.
- Semantic zoom provides a powerful way for users to view and navigate your app based on how your data is organized.
For information on the snapped view, the Share contract, and semantic zoom see the following:
- Snapped view guidance
- Snapped view sample
- Share guidance
- Share source sample
- Share target sample
- Semantic zoom guidance
- Semantic zoom sample (C#/VB/C++)
- Semantic zoom sample (JavaScript)
Explore the possibilities
Windows 8 is full of new features that can make your app shine. For more information, see the Windows 8 Product Guide for Developers.
Related topics
- Making great Windows Store apps
- User experience (UX) design patterns for Windows Store apps
- UX guidelines for Windows Store apps
- Samples and Guidance
- Contoso On-Demand code gallery sample
- XenApp Manager in the Windows Store
- Live tile sample
- Live tile guidance
- Guidelines and checklist for toast notifications
- Toast sample
- Navigation design for Windows Store apps
- Navigating between pages (C#/VB/C++)
- Supporting navigation (JavaScript)
- Snapped view guidance
- Snapped view sample
- Share source sample
- Share target sample
- Share guidance
- Semantic zoom sample (C#/VB/C++)
- Semantic zoom sample (JavaScript)
- Semantic zoom guidance
Build date: 6/20/2013
