Windows Phone 8 in Action

Chapter 4. Scheduled actions

This chapter covers

• Scheduling reminders
• Using the DatePicker and TimePicker controls
• Executing tasks with a background agent
• Integrating with the Lock Screen

You learned in the last chapter that a dormant application can’t perform any work. How can you create killer applications if they can’t do any work in the background? The answer lies with the Scheduled Action Service. In this chapter you’ll create a sample application to explore alarms, reminders, and background tasks—three different kinds of scheduled actions. Scheduled actions allow your application to alert the user or execute background work when your application isn’t running. Background agents are the mechanisms applications use to perform tasks ...