Building a Windows 8 app to link with your Office365 implementation for FREE

Microsoft has developed a excellent app template for UK Institutions with office365 and windows 8 clients.

The Contoso Learning Companion app for Windows 8 allows students and teachers can use to access their SharePoint/Office365 learning environments directly from a Windows 8 device. This application is white-label meaning that it can be customized by the institution or a Microsoft Partner.

Overview

The Contoso Learning Companion for Windows 8 provides a touch-friendly baseline Windows 8 sample app to support education scenarios on Office 365. It provides users with an aggregated experience that would otherwise require the user to access multiple sites via the browser. The Learning Companion for Windows 8 solves this issue by taking advantage of the new Windows 8 touch-friendly UI and by adding some client-side aggregation logic, and leveraging OneNote for managing lessons and assignments. 

Features

· Aggregated view of current events, classes, and study groups in SharePoint

· Access to class and study group sites, and their respective, events, materials, and related features in SharePoint

· OneNote integration for consumption and management of lessons and assignments via a class notebook

The Learning Companion is provided to serve as a baseline framework, which developers can use to create tailored solutions for their customers/institutions. Developers can take advantage of Windows 8 app contracts to extend the experience, such as through the Search, File Picker, and Send To and Play To contracts. Developers can customize the look and feel with school colours or by integrating stock imagery as a background. They can also extend the UI by adding additional components, such as an existing news feed and other server-side data sources.

Why not download the package to play around with the code to implement you institutional Windows 8 Office365 app.