Last month, we released an update to the Azure Mobile Apps .NET server SDK making it easier to get started and facilitated use of the SDK with any ASP.NET project. Today, we’re announcing changes to the Mobile App portal, further streamlining the experience and significantly simplifying the process for building web and mobile apps.

With these updates, we offer a set of mobile capabilities like push, mobile authentication, and offline sync, which customers can now add to any App Service app.

Continuous Web and Mobile experience

One of the great things about Azure App Service is that it offers one integrated platform for running both Web and Mobile Apps, among others. We often hear from customers that their web and mobile solutions usually go hand-in-hand. It is becoming increasingly rare to find a mobile-only or a web-only experience.

To support this, you can now simply add any mobile capabilities to your web app (or any other app type). Just click on Settings, and enable any features you like from the “Mobile App” section.

 

Create a Mobile App

The “Create Mobile App” gesture has been greatly simplified and now mirrors the “Create Web App” flow. When you create a Mobile App in the Azure Management Portal, you get a resource that looks just like a Web App. You can then add a database, notification hub, or authentication features via the Settings blade.

Add features

Each of the mobile features may be enabled individually from the “Mobile App” settings category, in any order and combination of your choosing.

The “Quickstart” option allows you to access complete Mobile App projects which show you an end-to-end application, both client and server, which you can use to start your development. These projects will require you to create a SQL database, but the quickstart will prompt you for this if you do not already have one.

 

 

You can create and connect data stores through the Mobile App Settings’ “Data” option. Right now, only SQL is available, but more providers will be coming soon. For more about working with data and enabling offline capabilities, see the Add offline sync to your app tutorial.

 

 

Push notifications in App Service are handled through Notification Hubs. You can provision a notification hub and link it to your application by selecting “Push” under the Mobile App settings category. Once a hub has been linked, the menu item will let you configure the push notification services for that hub. To learn more about working with notifications, see the Add push to your app tutorial.

 

 

You can also set up authentication through an App Service gateway. If your resource group already has a gateway, you will see configuration settings for your identity providers. If not, you will be prompted to create a new gateway. Please note that apps can also enable authentication through the “Authentication/Authorization” option in the settings blade. These scenarios will be converging, but for now, Mobile and API Apps should leverage the Mobile App category’s “User Authentication” option. For more, see the Add authentication to your app tutorial.

 

 

Mobile Apps is still in preview, but we hope you’ll try things out! Please let us know what you think in the comments, forums, or @AzureMobile, If you have suggestions for something you’d like to see in the product, you can also let us know on our feedback site.