WHS Phone: Add-In Developer Interview

● What are your future development plans for the application? Are you considering bringing this to WHS2011/SBS2011?

There will be an Add-in for WHS 2011/SBS2011. We also a have version of WHS Phone for Android that is currently in beta. WHS Phone for iOS is in the early stages of planning as well.

● Can you share with us your plans to bring this application to the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch devices?

Initially, I had only planned to build a Windows Phone 7 application for WHS Phone. Since I have launched WHS Phone I have been getting a lot of requests for iOS and Android support. A friend of mine, Reid Holland, offered to port my WP7 application over the Android version and I will be writing the iOS version; but only after the WP7 version is feature complete and I have written the WHS 2011 add-in.

● Any lessons learned from this project for budding developers out there?

First, Windows Home Server is a great platform to develop against. Most of the users are tech enthusiasts and have a higher technical skill level which makes it easier to support in most cases. The majority of the users are also mature and understanding. I have emailed, skype’d, even provided phone support and have been very impressed with the users. It really has been a pleasure developing this application and meeting some of the users.

Test all support configurations of your applications! I decided to localize WHS Phone and while I tested localization on the phone I did not have access to a WHS in another language. There were some “hiccups” in the initial launch with servers that were not in English. And, since the users were on the other side of the world they were emailing me in the middle of the night. I don’t think I slept for the first three days it was released. Since it was a problem with the add-in I was able to quickly get fixes out. I have since setup multiple servers in different languages to test against.

Thanks, Paul!  If you are running a Windows Home Server and you are on Windows Phone 7, give this add-in a shot!  Keep an eye out for iOS, and check out the Android application, available in the Android Market now.  And stay tuned for my interview with Reid Holland, who wrote the Android application.