Windows Store app, Azure, WNS and Windows account integration

Hi,

I have been building Windows apps for many years for enterprises, but now I am asked to integratie push notification functionality. Here I struggle with the whole integration of components. Let me explain the target solution.

Within our company we have build a framework which we use for customer projects. This framework is basically a core UWP application. On top of this, we add customer specific views. Each customer project will lead to a unique application with a unique package name. The application already uses Azure AD for employee authentication in order to receive and send data. The application is never submitted to the Windows Store, but distributed using the MDM tool our customers have selected.

Now with push notifications (WNS), we need to register the application in the Windows store, so we get a package ID needed to configure WNS. And here the struggle begins.

1. I cannot create a Windows developer center account with the office365 account I use at my company. The dev center website told me I had to use a personal MS account. So I used a personal Microsoft account for this. With this new account I was able to register the application to the Windows Store (app name reservation) and I saw the app registration in the Azure portal (of my personal dev center account).

2. But I didn't see an option to link our application to our company Azure portal and this is part of our infrastructure where we (my fellow developer colleagues and me) want to test the solution.

3. When configuring WNS in (my personal) Azure portal, I got an error stating the WNS credentials are invalid. The Package SID was supplied in the manner described by the documentation (ms-app://<Package SID>) and the secret value had been created and added as well. Documentation nor other sources had a solution for this.

4. This is only the struggle I have for our own developments, but how will this work once we want to roll out push notifications to one of our customers. As they will have their specific version of the application, with their own package name and with the required to use their own Azure portal, does the customer have to create a windows dev center account themselves? And if they cannot create such account using the company's office365 accounts, how will they be able to have WNS set up without using personal portals?

I hope this uphill battle is described in a clear way. If not, please let me know where clarification is needed. At this moment we have halted push notification implementation and we really want to continue.

Mike