Pinning secondary tiles (Windows Store apps using C#/VB/C++ and XAML)

This section shows you how to use secondary tiles, which enable a user to pin specific content or experiences from an app to the Start screen, to have direct access to that content or experience. For instance, a user could create a secondary tile that represents a specific friend in a social networking app. That friend's updates could then be reflected in that secondary tile, and selecting the tile would open the social networking app to that friend's page.

The following roadmap suggests a path you should follow as you learn how to define and communicate with secondary tiles:

1. Individual topics in this section give some basic conceptual information, but most also assume that you already have some background knowledge. If you are new to this feature, you should first familiarize yourself with tile and notification terms and concepts. Then you can understand what can be done with them and how the parts all fit together. This conceptual material is found under Tiles, Badges, and Notifications.
2. You should also familiarize yourself with the details and concepts of secondary tiles. You can read about those in the Secondary tiles overview.
3. Next, you should go over the Guidelines and checklist for secondary tiles to familiarize yourself with best practices that you will employ in your code and when you use these elements.
4. Your app first needs to provide an option to pin a secondary tile. This normally involves an app bar, a pin or unpin button, a confirmation Flyout, and of course a secondary tile. The Quickstart: Pinning a secondary tile topic walks you through the coding involved.
5. After the user has pinned a secondary tile for your app, your app will need to communicate with that tile. To set up that communication see Quickstart: Sending notifications to a secondary tile. This topic also covers how to keep a user's secondary tiles synched on multiple devices and how to update your secondary tile.
6. For a full sample that implements secondary tiles, see the Secondary tiles sample.

In this section

Build date: 6/20/2013