Last modified November 5, 2024 by Shelly Wolfe

Push campaign prerequisites

This article details the steps your development team must take before you can create push notification campaigns in Swrve. It also explains how to configure custom alert sounds for your push notifications.

Technical prerequisites

Depending on the app platform, your development team must complete the following tasks:

All platforms

  • Update your app with the latest SDK – To make use of all of the features included in Swrve push notifications (for example, rich media, silent notifications, audience targeting), update your app with the latest Swrve SDK. For more information about integrating the SDK, see the platform-specific integration guide.
  • Time the push permission request – When a user first installs a push-enabled app, they are typically asked for permission to accept push notifications from the app. Swrve enables your development team to change this timing. For example, you can set the timing to request permission at the start of the session or when a user triggers one of a list of events. For more information, see the platform-specific integration guide.
  • Test push notifications in your Swrve dashboard – Before creating your first push notification campaign, your development team should test the push notification integration on QA devices. For more information, see QA testing push notifications.

iOS

  • Push delivery and influenced tracking – To track the delivery of push notifications, you must add a service extension and app group. To make use of Swrve’s influenced reporting (that is, users who didn’t interact directly with a notification but later opened the app), you must also ensure you add an app group to your service extension. For more information, see Adding a service extension and Adding an app group to your service extension in the iOS integration guide.
  • Rich push notifications – To use rich push notifications on iOS, there are a few extra steps required to add the rich push service extension. For more information, see the iOS integration guide.
  • Enable remote notification background mode for silent notifications – If you want to send background app updates, you must configure your app to process silent notifications in the background. For more information, see the iOS integration guide.
  • Create a push certificate and upload it to Swrve – If you’re not already using push notifications, your development team must create a push certificate, upload it to Swrve and test it. The certificate is used to authorize your app to receive push notifications and authorize Swrve to send push notifications to your app. For more information, see How do I manage iOS push certificates for push notifications?
  • Submit your updated app to Apple for review – After your development team has integrated the latest SDK, your iTunes Connect administrator must submit the app for review and inclusion in the App Store. As soon as it is available, your existing users are prompted to update the app while new users automatically get the latest version. This new app version then invokes the push permission request, logging device tokens back to Swrve, which you can then use to target those users by means of push notifications.

Android

Amazon

  • Create an Amazon Client ID and Client Secret and enter it in Swrve – To enable your app to send push notifications to Amazon devices, you must create a Client ID and Client Secret, enter them in Swrve and then test them. For more information, see Creating and entering the Amazon Client ID and Client Secret in the Android integration guide.

Huawei

  • Get the App ID and App Secret for your app and enter them in Swrve – To enable your app to send push notifications to Huawei devices, you must get the App ID and App Secret for your app, enter them in Swrve, and then test them. For more information, see Managing the Huawei App ID and App Secret in the Android integration guide.

Android notification channels

What are notification channels?

Starting with Android O, notifications sent to Android devices require a notification channel, which indicates the message type (e.g. “promotional”, “order status”, “friend requests”). Your developer must create the individual notification channels in the app code, along with each channel’s default behavior (importance level, light, colors, vibration, etc.). This behavior is applied to all notifications in that channel.

Among other behaviors, your developer can customize each channel’s Importance level, which determines the interruption level of all notifications posted in the channel. The Importance level succeeds the Delivery priority setting used by devices running Android N and earlier. Once the channel is created, users can disable or change aspects of the notification channel through the app’s settings. For more information on creating notification channels, see Android’s developer documentation.

Adding notification channels to the Swrve dashboard

In order to specify a push campaign’s notification channel, you must first add that notification channel to the Swrve dashboard. New notification channels cannot be created programmatically through the Swrve dashboard. For this reason, you need to coordinate with your mobile app developers to ensure the notification channel IDs added to the dashboard match the app’s notification channels’.

To add a notification channel:

  1. On the Settings menu, select Push notifications settings.
  2. On the Push Notification Settings screen, under Android notification channels, select Add channel.
  3. In the Add notification channel dialog box, in the Name box, enter the name of your notification channel.
  4. In the Channel ID box, enter the notification channel’s id. Note: this value must match the ID of the notification channel coded in the app.
  5. Optionally, check Set as default notification channel to make that channel your Swrve app’s default notification channel.
  6. Select Save.

The notification channel is now available to select from the Notification channel list in the campaign’s Push settings.

For guidelines on using Android notification channels with push notifications, see Push notification settings.

App and Dashboard default channels

When you designate a notification channel as the default, the channel is automatically applied to all push notification campaigns created thereafter. Changing the default notification channel does not impact any previously created campaigns. If you have not added any notification channels through the dashboard, all notifications are sent using the app’s default notification channel.

When sending push notifications via Swrve’s push API, you have the option to specify an android_channel_id value in the request. If you omit the android_channel_id parameter from the request, the push API service falls back to the notification channel set for the campaign. If no notification channel is set for the campaign, then the notification is sent through the app’s default notification channel.

For more information on sending push notifications via API, see Swrve’s send push notification API.

Custom alert sounds

Swrve enables you to include a custom sound that is played when a user receives your push notification. To make a custom sound available to select in the push campaign workflow, you must first add add it to your app Push Notification Settings.

To add a custom sound:

  1. On the Settings menu, select Push notifications settings.
  2. On the Push Notification Settings screen, under Custom Notification Alert Sounds, select Add Sound.
  3. In the Add Sound dialog box, in the Friendly name box, enter a user-friendly name for your sound file.
  4. In the File name box, enter the actual name of your file, without the extension. For example, enter custom_sound for the filename custom_sound.wav.
  5. Select Create Sound.

The custom sound is now available to select from the Alert Sound list on the Add Content screen of the push notification workflow.

Note: Custom alert sounds are only supported on iOS and iPadOS devices.

For guidelines on using sounds with push notifications, see Push notification best practices.

Push token update period

Swrve performs several batch jobs throughout the day to find users with push device tokens registered and then loads any new device tokens into the push notification system. Therefore, it can take up to six hours to add non-QA users to the system, depending on factors such as when the batch job is run and your company’s time zone. The estimated audience size that displays on the Audience block of the push campaign builder is updated regularly to include new users. However, they may not be immediately available to send push notifications to, depending on the timing of the batch run (this does not apply to testing push notifications on QA devices or push notifications sent via API).

Next steps