Configuring a Push Notification

The Agillic App Push channel allows you to send Push Notifications to your recipient's mobile devices. Within the Channels dropdown you will find App Push. This article will focus on how to set up a Push Notification, but if you need any information regarding setting up a Push Notification, you can find more information here. 

This article will provide you with a guide on how to set up a Push Notification. If you need more general information about the benefits of using the App Push channel and some concrete use cases you can read more about that here. In order to configure the App Push find more information here. 

Contents

1. How to create a Push Notification 
2. How to add content to the Push Notification 
   1. Adding an On-click Action 
   2. Adding a Language Version 
   3. Adding Custom Notification Fields
3. Preview your Push Notification
   1. Preview Panel
   2. Preview on Device

The Channels Dropdown

How to create a Push Notification

1. Log in to Staging. 
2. Mouse-over the Channels dropdown and select 'App Push'.
3. Click on 'New App Push' or 'New Folder' depending on if you want to create a folder that can contain your App Push.
4. To get an overview of the existing folders click on the left hand navigation menu in the upper left corner and unfold the sidebar.
5. It is possible to create a new Push Notification when clicking on the '+' icon in the top right corner of the sidebar. 
6. It is possible to create a new folder directly from the bottom of the sidebar. 
7. Fill in the name of your new Push Notification and then click 'Create'. 
8. Your Push Notification is now created and is ready to have content added. 

How to create a new Push Notification

How to add content to the Push Notification

Now your Push Notification is ready to have content added.

1. Add a headline (optional) within the ‘Title’ field. This field supports both Promotions and Dynamic Content Fields (Person Data, Global Data, or a Unique Lookup).
2. Add text to the 'Body' field.
3. It is possible to add both Promotions and Dynamic Content Fields (Person Data, Global Data, or a Unique Lookup) to the Push Notification. It is possible to do so both within the shortcuts beneath the ‘Body’ field or from the right hand sidebar, which will appear when you click on the ‘Title’ or 'Body' field.
4. If you want to add an Image you can do so by sliding the icon next to 'IMAGE'. When enabling this you can add a customised image from Assets, External Links customisable with Plain text Promotions Fields and Content Fields (Person Data, Global Data, or a Unique Lookup).
   You can only use images if your app supports rich push content. Images will appear on devices with the minimum required OS version (iOS 10+ and Android 4.1+). You can either add an image from the Assets Manager or an External image in either JPG/JPEG or PNG format. We recommend using landscape orientation recommended (2:1 e.g. 1080x540px).
5. Click 'Save' in the upper right corner.

Remember to test your Push Notification before sending it to live recipients. Read below how to test it.

Adding Content to Your Push Notification

Adding a Click Action

You can define a Click Action to send the recipient to a specific place within the app or to a website page when they click on the Push Notification on their device. If 'Click Action' is not switched on and defined, the app will just open up on the app's default start screen when the recipient clicks on the Push Notification.

If you want to use a specific Click Action you can do so by following these steps:

1. Switch on 'Click Action'.
2. Insert a Custom App Action by adding a deeplink or URL (this can be anything from a custom URL, like 'https://MyCustomLink/CUSTOMER_EMAIL' to a custom app action like 'app://OpenMyCustomizedOfferMenu/CUSTOMER_EMAIL').
3. You can customise the Click Action with either Promotions or Dynamic Content Fields (Person Data, Global Data, or a Unique Lookup).
4. If you save an empty Click Action it will be disabled.

Click Action

Adding a Language Version

You can add Language Versions to your Push Notification, which allows you to create different translations of the Push Notification. In order to add Language Versions to your Push Notification you will need to define the languages. You can read about how to do that here.

When your languages have been defined you can add them to your Push Notification.

1. In the upper left corner open the 'Default' dropdown.
2. Within the dropdown select 'Add language versions to this Push Notification’.
3. A popup will appear and here you can select a language and press 'Ok'.
4. When hovering over the language dropdown, the new language(s) will now appear.
5. You are now able to select one of the languages selected below. All languages will have been generated with the same content as the default language version and you can now translate them appropriately.

Note that some features are not affected by Language Versions. This includes Promotions and enabling or disabling the Image or Click Action toggles which have to be done within the default version.

Adding a Language Version to a Push Notification

Adding Custom Notification Fields

You also have the possibility to send over Custom Notification Fields with your Push Notification. These fields are primarily for your app developer to use.

Custom Notification Fields should be used for general information about the Push Notification that you want to use in the app. They can for example be used to carry information about the context for the execution which the app developer can use to either customise the experience in the app interface or for reporting purposes.

For our Cafe Connect example we have chosen to send over the customer's favourite category and a name of a sound file. This will enable the app to show content based on the customer's favourite category and to play a special sound file for this particular Push Notification.

In order to add the Custom Notification Fields press the Custom Notification Fields editor in the bottom of the page:

You are now presented with this pop-up where you can add the keys and values for the fields you are sending along. Please note that you cannot have spaces in the key field.

Next, you can enter the value which it should contain. You can also select either a promotion field or a dynamic field by pressing one of the two personalisation icons and you will then receive the content of these fields as custom notification fields in your app.

Press ‘Done’ and the notification fields are added to your Push Notification.

Preview your Push Notification

Agillic offers two methods to preview your Push Notification. The preview panel shows a representation of the Push Notification as you configure. As there are so many combinations of devices out there you can also preview the push on a target device using the “Try It” button.

Testing and Previewing your Push Notification

Preview Panel

Once you have finished your Push Notification, a fast way to test the layout of the Push Notification is to preview it directly within the Push Notification editor. When previewing the Push Notification with a recipient ID it will show you how the Push Notification will be viewed by this specific recipient. When using Promotions or Dynamic Content Fields (Person Data, Global Data, or a Unique Lookup) it is useful to view how the Push Notification will look for the specific recipient.

Within the 'Preview as' field you type in a specific Recipient ID, for example a Test Recipient ID, in order to preview the Push Notification with custom data. If you choose a Recipient with no data in order to show specific Promotions or Dynamic Content Fields, the preview will show the data previously shown.

Preview On Device

The ‘Try it’ button will allow you to send a Push Notification to a device to preview how the push will be experienced by the recipient.

Note that this feature will only work with devices and recipients that are registered in your staging environment. This is intended to avoid accidentally sending preview messages to live customers.

To preview on a device click 'Try it' in the upper left corner. Search for the recipient you want to send the Push Notification to, and if you need to see how the Push Notification will look for a specific recipient you can search for this specific recipient ID. Choose a target app and click 'Send'. A pop-up will appear with the result and your recipient will have received the Push Notification.