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How to Create a Mobile Push Notification Template

Heather
  • Updated

Please note: 

To unlock this capability, you will need to have added Mobile Push Notifications to your Optimove package. If you can’t see this feature in your Optimove instance, contact your CSM to find out more. 

 

 

Overview

You can design and save templates that can be re-used when you and your team are sending mobile push notifications and in-app messages via Optimove. 

 

How to Create a Mobile Push Template

To access your existing mobile push notification templates, and create new ones, navigate to the Templates area and select OptiMobile Push.

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Working with Templates

Add a new template by clicking the blue Create New button. 

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From the Templates area, you can edit, duplicate, delete, and create new templates. 
 

Name and Identifier

You must give each template a name to identify the template when sending a mobile push notification or in-app message. From the name, a unique identifier will also be generated.

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Mobile Push Template Content

As you add content to the notification you can preview how the notification will look on a user's device. By default, the preview shows how the notification will look when it arrives on an iPhone.

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Click the Android tab to see how the notification will look when it arrives on an Android phone.
 
If you have added an image or buttons, click the notification preview to see how it will look when the user expands the notification on their phone.
 

Personalization

In your text, you can also add user attributes to personalize the message. You can learn more about adding Personalization Tags to your OptiMobile messages here, and find out about adding Conditional Language here. 

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Image

If you want to add a picture to your notification, click "Add Image" to open your Media Library.

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Here, you can upload a new image, select an image you have previously uploaded, or search the Unsplash stock image library.

 

To upload a new image, click the upload primary action button. Click "Choose File" to browse your computer and find the image. Select any tags to help you find the image later or to add a new tag, just start typing and click "Create new tag". Click "Upload" to add the image to your media library and include this in your push notification.
 
To use an image you have previously uploaded, simply select the image and click the tick primary action button. You can either scroll through your library or filter by the tags you have added previously.
 
 
To use an image from the Unsplash stock image library, click the "Stock" tab and enter one or more keywords in the search box. Scroll through the results and select an image to see more information about it. Once you have found the image, click the camera primary action button to add this image to your media library and include this in your push notification.
 

 

Please note:

The preview will show how the notification will look when it arrives on a phone with a thumbnail image. Click the notification to see how it will look when the user expands the notification on their phone.

To remove the image from your push notification, click "Clear Image".

 

Other Options

To open a URL, add a data payload, or set any platform-specific options, expand "Advanced".

This can be particularly useful for push templates to save JSON payloads which can act as destinations for push notifications along with their relevant content.
 

Open a URL

To open a URL when the push notification is tapped by the user, toggle the "Open URL" switch and enter the URL you want to open.
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Please note:

Ensure that you have reviewed the appropriate SDK integration guides to support URL push.

 

Background

To send a notification that can be processed in the background, toggle the "Run background handler" switch. The title & message become optional and can be omitted to create a silent push.

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On iOS, this will set the "content-available" flag on the notification.
 
What does this mean?
If your app’s server-based content changes infrequently or at irregular intervals, you can use background notifications to notify your app when new content becomes available. A background notification is a remote notification that doesn’t display an alert, play a sound, or badge your app’s icon. It wakes your app in the background and gives it time to initiate downloads from your server and update its content.
 

Data

To add an arbitrary meta-data object to the push notification, for example, to trigger a deep link, toggle the "Data" switch and enter a valid JSON object into the editor. Additional data can be consumed by the SDK, please refer to the platform integration guides for further information.
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Action Buttons

You can add up to three action buttons to a push notification by toggling the "Action Buttons" switch. Enter the identifier (used by your app to determine what action to take) and text for each button. To remove a button, click the trashcan icon. Examples might include allowing customers to read terms and conditions or check their balance.
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Please note:

The preview will show how the notification will look when it arrives on a phone with a thumbnail image. Click the notification to see how it will look when the user expands the notification on their phone.

 

iOS Settings

iOS Badges

To set the badge on your app on iOS, toggle the "Set Badge" switch. By clicking on "Badge Type" you can choose whether to set the badge to the absolute number you enter in "Count" or to Increment the badge by the positive or negative number you enter in "Count".

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The iOS badge allows customers to see how many notifications they have received from your app, and will display similar to the following:
Give notification badges a custom aesthetic with BadgeMe
 

iOS Category

To set the category on your app on iOS, toggle the "Set Category" switch. Type in the category.
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You create category objects to define your app’s actionable notifications — notifications that have action buttons the user can select in response to the notification. Each category object you create stores the actions and other behaviors associated with a specific type of notification. 
 

Categories can have associated actions, which define custom buttons the system displays for notifications of that category. When the system has unlimited space, the system displays up to 10 actions. When the system has limited space, the system displays at most two actions.

To learn more about iOS categories, relevance and interruption levels, check out their documentation here.

 

iOS (15+) Relevance Score

The Relevance Score is a tool that allows you to influence how your app's notifications are ordered, but it only applies under very specific circumstances related to the iOS Scheduled Summary feature.

How it Works

When a user enables Scheduled Summary, iOS groups non-urgent notifications and delivers them in a single batch at a time of the user's choosing. The relevance score you set (from 0.0 for lowest to 1.0 for highest) tells iOS which of your app's notifications is most important to show at the top of that group.

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When Relevance Score is Used ✅

For the relevance score to have any effect, the following conditions must be met:

  • The user must have Scheduled Summary enabled on their iOS device (Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Summary).
  • Your app must be included in the user's list of apps for the summary.

Result: iOS uses the relevance score to sort your notifications within the summary batch. The notification with the highest score appears first.

When Relevance Score is Ignored ❌

In all other scenarios, the relevance score has no effect. This includes when:

  • The user has Scheduled Summary turned off.
  • Your app is not included in their summary list.

Result: Notifications are delivered in real-time as they arrive and are sorted chronologically. The relevance score value is not used.

iOS (15+) Interruption Level

To set the interruption level for iOS, toggle the "Set Interruption Level" switch, and select from the available options.

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The available interruption levels are:

Active

The system presents the notification immediately, lights up the screen, and can play a sound.

Passive

The system adds the notification to the notification list without lighting up the screen or playing a sound.

Time-Sensitive

The system presents the notification immediately, lights up the screen, and can play a sound, but won’t break through system notification controls.

Critical

The system presents the notification immediately, lights up the screen, and bypasses the mute switch to play a sound. If you select this option and your app does not have the necessary entitlement then the message will not be delivered. The critical notification entitlement must be requested from Apple and is heavily restricted.

 

Android Settings

Android Priority

To set the priority flag and wake up Android devices, toggle the High Priority switch.
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You have two options for assigning delivery priority to downstream messages on Android: normal and high priority. Delivery of normal and high-priority messages works like this:

  • Normal priority. This is the default priority for data messages. Normal priority messages are delivered immediately when the device is not sleeping. When the device is in Doze mode, the delivery may be delayed to conserve battery until the device exits Doze. For less time-sensitive messages, such as notifications of new emails, keeping your UI in sync, or syncing app data in the background, choose normal delivery priority.

  • High priority. FCM attempts to deliver high-priority messages immediately, allowing FCM to wake a sleeping device when necessary and to run some limited processing (including very limited network access). High-priority messages generally should result in user interaction with your app or its notifications.

To learn more about FCM priorities, check out their documentation here.

 

Android Notification Channel

For Android users, you can assign each mobile push notification to a different channel type. Google notification channels can be used to separate mobile push templates into groups, for example, promotional versus transactional messages. 

Notification Channels are mandatory for sending mobile push to Android devices, and can be set up in the Android developer site. 

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