Live Activities help you keep customers informed during a live event, right on their lock screen, without them opening your app. Instead of sending a new push notification every time something changes, one tile stays on the lock screen and updates in place. A typical example is a match score that changes as the game progresses.

In this article, you will learn what Live Activities are, who is responsible for each part, how to view results, and the limitations to plan for before you launch.

What are Live Activities?

Live Activities (iOS) and Live Updates (Android) are persistent tiles that appear on your customers' lock screen and in the Dynamic Island on supported iPhones. They update in real-time while an event is in progress. With Live Activities, you can:

• Start a tile for every customer subscribed to a Preference Center topic, such as a favorite team, or for a single customer.
• Update every subscribed customer's tile at once with a single request, instead of sending one update per device.
• End the tile when the event is over.
• View how many tiles were started for each activity in Optimove.

The outcome: your customers can follow a live event at a glance, and your app stays front of mind for the whole event.

Common examples include:

• Sports: Live scores and match status.
• E-commerce and retail: Same-day order or delivery status.
• Travel: Flight status, such as boarding and gate changes.

Who Does What

Live Activities involve three parties. Before you plan a launch, make sure each one knows its part.

• Your app team:
  • Designs and builds the tile inside your iOS and Android apps, including its layout, branding, and imagery.
  • Decides exactly what information the tile shows on each platform.
  • Updates your apps to the Optimove SDK versions that support Live Activities and enables the required app settings.
• Your backend team:
  • Tells Optimove when to start, update, and end each activity, and sends the content to display.
  • Sets the pace of updates, based on your live event feed.
• Optimove:
  • Finds the customers to reach from your Preference Center topic, or the single customer you specify.
  • Delivers the start, each update, and the end to those customers' devices through Apple and Google.
  • Reports results for each activity.

Optimove delivers your content exactly as your backend sends it. The content of each update must match what your app's tile expects. If it doesn't, the update may be dropped on the device without an error.

How Live Activities Work

1. Your app team builds the tile and enables Live Activities in the Optimove SDK.
2. Customers subscribe to a topic in your app's Preference Center, for example, their favorite team.
3. When the event begins, your backend asks Optimove to start the activity for that topic. Customers receive a short alert, and the tile appears on their lock screen.
4. As the event progresses, your backend sends updates. Each update reaches every subscribed customer's tile at once.
5. When the event ends, your backend ends the activity, and the tile is removed from the lock screen.

Before You Start

Make sure the following are in place:

• Mobile Push is already set up for your iOS and/or Android app.
• Your app team has built the tile and updated to Optimove iOS SDK 6.14.0 or later and Optimove Android SDK 7.21.0 or later.
• On iOS, frequent updates are enabled in your app if you need rapid updates, such as live scores.
• You have a Preference Center topic for customers to follow. This isn't needed for single-customer tiles.
• Your backend team has an Optimove API key with the Integrations or Admin role.

For technical implementation details, see the Live Activities guide in the Optimove Developer Hub.

Viewing Results in Settings

Results for each activity are available in Settings:

1. Navigate to Settings → Mobile → Live Activities. 
2. If you have more than one brand, select it from the dropdown at the top right. Adjust the date range if needed.
3. Find your activity in the list. The most recent activities appear first, each with its status (Active or Ended).
4. Expand the activity to see:
   • Audience: The customers you targeted.
   • Start sent and Start failed: How many starts were sent, and how many could not be sent.
   • Started on device: How many tiles actually appeared on customers' devices.
   • Started and Ended: When the activity began and finished.
   • Each update and the end: When it was sent, and whether it was sent to iOS and Android.

FAQ

Plan around the following before you commit to a use case.