Scenario
I'm currently tasked with adding Microsoft Band support to one of our cross-platform (C#, Swift and Java) mass-market business apps.
In this app, time-sensitive business requests are sent as push notifications to our phone app's background process.
That background process then needs to show an alert on Microsoft Band along with two buttons (Respond and Dismiss). The alert should disappear forever after an app-specified timeout (15 seconds) has expired. Like an expiring toast on Windows 10 does, with its user-configurable buttons.
Finally, the Band needs to raise an event in the background app when the button is pressed--or it needs to activate the app and pass in a notification-specific identifier. Again, like a toast can do on Windows 10.
I have read through the entire Microsoft Band SDK documentation, watched the BUILD 2015 video for MSBAND, read through StackOverflow posts, etc. Please excuse me if this has all been asked before--but I cannot find a successful answer.
Questions
Is it possible to show a notification on Microsoft Band with multiple buttons (like built-in Band apps can display)?
In the BUILD 2015 video, the presenters indicated that Windows 10 UWP apps would be able to send callbacks from user-defined action buttons: did this feature make it into the Windows 10 SDK? For custom notification buttons?
I fear that the answer to all of the above is "no", but I'm really hoping that others have figured out a way to make this happen. If not, I'm happy to provide feedback to Phil Hoff-MSFT for future SDK releases (and we can drop Microsoft Band support for the current release).
Thanks everyone for any/all community knowledge you can share here.
Regarding question #1, no, it is not possible show or customize buttons when sending notifications to the Band.
Regarding question #2, while it is currently possible to receive callbacks for button presses within custom Tile layouts on Windows 8.1/10, the application must running (foreground or background), connected to the Band, and subscribed to those events in order for them to be received. Platform changes made to Windows 10 allows for the possibility of receiving such events even when the application is not currently running, but doing so likely requires changes to the Band firmware, Microsoft Health application, and the SDK. I have no insight into if or when that might happen.
The closest you can get to your goal scenario at the moment is along the lines of:
Create a Tile with a custom layout that has your two buttons.
Receive the push notification from your back-end (handled by your application in the background).
Connect to the Band.
Start listening to button events for your Tile.
Send a new page to the Tile using your layout.
Send a notification to the Band (to alert the user to the new page).
Wait (up to x number of seconds) for the user to go to the page and press one of the buttons.
If a button is pressed, or time elapses, remove the page from the Tile.
Disconnect from the Band.