Correspondence is a collaboration framework for occasionally-connected clients. Express your model once, and it gives you local storage, synchronization, and push notification across devices. We currently support Silverlight and Windows Phone. Android and Web are coming soon.

Collaborative framework

People don’t just own one computer anymore. Now they have a desktop, a laptop, and a phone. They want their data to seamlessly flow across all of their devices.

People take their devices with them. These devices aren’t always connected. And even when they are, people don’t want to wait for them to connect to a central server. Everyone should have their own data on their own device for immediate access.

People use software to collaborate with each other. Some domains are overtly collaborative, such as social networking and gaming. Others are more discreet, like customer relationship management and project planning. Actions performed by collaborators affect the user experience.

Systems built with Correspondence

We have built a number of systems using Correspondence.

• Commuter: A continuous podcast playlist for iTunes on Windows.
• Faceted Reversi: Head-to-head reversi game for Windows Phone.
• Dallas TechFest 2011: Personal conference schedule for Windows Phone.
• Thought Cloud: Collaborative mind mapper (demo).

Slides

The slides for the presentation are rendered in Silverlight. Once the page loads, click on it to give it focus. Then use Page Down to progress through the presentation. Hit F11 to enter full-screen mode. The sample code used in this presentation is on GitHub.

Videos

• Correspondence on Windows Phone 7 (16:30)
• Occasionally-connected applications in Silverlight with Correspondence (56:41)
• Coding Correspondence on WP7 and WPF (45:40)

Get started

These are the resources you will need to build an occasionally connected Windows Phone 7 or Silverlight application using Correspondence.

1. Install the NuGet Package Manager through the Visual Studio 2010 Extension Manager. Detailed instructions on the NuGet project site.
2. Add the Correspondence.WindowsPhone.AllInOne or Correspondence.Silverlight.AllInOne package to a Windows Phone 7 or Silverlight 4 application.
3. Follow the walkthrough on the Correspondence project site to learn how to build a Correspondence model.
4. Sign up for a synchronization server API Key. Put the API key in your POXConfigurationProvider.