It seems there is lot of overlap between features provided by both of these services:
contextually-aware smart push notifications
in-app messaging across all connected devices.
Should we prefer Mobile Engagement over Mobile Servies?
It depends on what features you want. Also, don't forget Azure Mobile Apps - an extension to Azure Web Apps (Azure App Service) that has the same mobile properties as Azure Mobile Services, but with App Service advantages.
If your needs are more in-line with enterprise usage - you need data access to on-prem or cloud SQL services, offline sync, enterprise authentication, continuous deployment, A/B testing, an associated web site that uses the same backend - then Azure Mobile Apps (Web Apps) is the right choice.
If your needs are more in the consumer / brand space - engagement analytics and in-app messaging, then Azure Mobile Engagement is the right choice.
Both have application usage statistics and push notifications.
One does not preclude the other. You could, for example, write the mobile backend and associated web site in Azure Mobile Apps and then bring in the rich engagement analytics that Mobile Engagement to your apps.
Azure Mobile Services/ Mobile Apps and Azure Mobile Engagement are both complementary technologies. Mobile Services provide push notifications using Azure Notifications Hub. Mobile Engagement provides a full 360 degree view about how your mobile app users are using the app using rich analytics and then you can create smart/specific and targeted segments using the collected analytics data. Once you have these segments, you can send both system and in-app notifications but very targeted. Hence the name Mobile Engagement. It is all about increasing your app usage, retention and monetization using smart engagement with Microsoft Azure Mobile Engagement. For more details check this link - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-engagement-overview/.
P.S. I am a product manager on Azure Mobile Engagement services.
Related
I develop multi tenant web app.
App is cofigured to support Accounts in any organizational directory (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-modify-supported-accounts).
I plan to register App in AppSource marketplace "Web App" category (https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/?product=web-apps).
App must support "Free Trial" publishing option (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/marketplace/determine-your-listing-type).
How to restrict access to my app only for trial organizations and organizations that bought a license?
How to check license? Or maybe Azure will not grant users access tokens for app if they have no license?
«There are loosely 2 kinds of SaaS Apps that we support today - Listing and Sell Through Microsoft. Listing is when all you want to do is to list your SaaS offer on Microsoft marketplaces and all the customer interaction, provisioning, commerce etc is handled by you and your SaaS experiences. Sell Through Microsoft is what allows you to enable your SaaS offer trasanctable via Microsoft marketplaces.»
https://www.microsoftpartnercommunity.com/t5/Microsoft-AppSource-and-Azure/SaaS-Onboarding-Walkthrough-or-End-to-End-Document-for/m-p/7731/highlight/true#M123
If you want (as me) to sell through Microsoft, here is API
https://learn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/azure/marketplace/partner-center-portal/pc-saas-fulfillment-api-v2
I have already created a Documentdb database and now i should build a REST API on Azure with Node.js. I have read the documentation, but i did't understand it good enough.
Cloud services could be a good solution, but if i didn't misunderstand, it is Python and .NET based.
If i want to build a REST API and an user interface voor the REST API, which services should i better use? Web apps? API apps? Or any another product?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-api/app-service-api-nodejs-api-app
Per Azure's documentation,
An API app can take advantage of features offered by Web Apps and Mobile Apps. The reverse is also true: if you use a web app or mobile app to host an API, it can take advantage of API Apps features such as Swagger metadata for client code generation and CORS for cross-domain browser access. The only difference between the three app types (API, web, mobile) is the name and icon used for them in the Azure portal.
An API app and a Web app will equally work for you. Currently, all of Web, Mobile and API Apps are collectively called App Services. For most scenarios, Web Apps is the best choice.
More on this:
Azure Web API vs Web App
Differences between Azure App Services and Cloud Services
I would like to ask about an Authentication with Azure mobile app.
As I checked the document, Azure mobile service supports client side login for Facebook
Client-directed login operation
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/jj710106.aspx
Using the Facebook iOS SDK for logging in to Azure Mobile Services
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/carlosfigueira/2014/02/05/using-the-facebook-ios-sdk-for-logging-in-to-azure-mobile-services/
However, I cannot find any documents about Azure mobile app.
Is client side login for Facebook be supported even in Azure mobile app?
If it is supported, is implementation same as the document "Using the Facebook iOS SDK for logging in to Azure Mobile Services" avove?
Azure Mobile App is newly rearranged-and-rebadged for Azure Mobile Service. You can think them as version 1 and version 2 of the same project (Azure also provides one-click migration and its detailed information). Therefore, almost all documents and libraries for Azure Mobile Service are valid for Azure Mobile App.
For Facebook Login settings, you have to set App Id and App Secret values which obtain from Facebook Developer dashboard. The values of them can be set at Azure Mobile App Settings menu. please check out Azure official document Authentication section.
I have an application running on the Azure cloud.
Currently this is deployed as an Azure web app.
Is there any way to monitor the website status and build a page like this or this?
As you can see in those examples both have:
a service global status
An historical status which is grouped in hour/day/months period
Does azure has an API that I can use to monitor my services?
Application Insights and the Azure portal will give you a rich monitoring and diagnostics experience for your web app. It is in preview at this time.
You can get very granular data points or high-level graphs and trends. The historical data can go back as far as 13 months for aggregated data points. You can read more about the data retention policy here.
The Azure portal (the new one at portal.azure.com) gives you a rich UI to interact with the telemetry data from your app. And if you want to customize a blade to view specific data for your app you can do that too.
Azure Web Apps also has built-in monitoring support that you can use. It won't give you the depth that Application Insights does but you should look at this too to see if it will give you the data you need. And of course, you can customize the monitoring blades in the Azure portal to suit your needs.
Azure does offer a robust RESTFul API for managing and monitoring your services. Essentially anything you can do through the Azure Management Portal is accessible via an API, including analytics. The portal itself often uses this same API.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee460799.aspx
You can also use MSFT authored .NET assemblies to create your own monitoring applications in Visual Studio. I find the monitoring and analytics features more robust via this model. These are available on GitHub:
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/management-libraries-for-net-release-announcement/
Is there any management API in Windows Azure Mobile Services?
For example: methods to create mobile services or data tables.
There's a Mobile Service Management API however it is not publicly available yet. One thing you could do is take a look at the source code for Windows Azure CLI tools and figure out how this API has been implemented. You can view the source code on GitHub: https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-tools-xplat.