Push notifications let you send a message to anyone who has your church's app installed. The message appears on the member's screen, and if it is not tapped it moves to their lock screen and then out of the way.
A useful way to think about the two halves of this: the inbox is the record, and the push is the delivery. Every message you send is kept in the member's Inbox inside the app whether or not their device shows a notification, so a member who has notifications switched off still receives everything. They just have to open the app to see it.
This article covers both sides: how your church sends a notification, and what members control on their own devices.
Sending a push notification
Send a notification
Open Messaging in the top toolbar and choose Push notification under Send.
Add an image if you want one, using the pencil in the image area at the top of the window.
Fill in the message:
Title - the headline members see. This is optional.
Message - the body of the notification. This is required, and it holds up to 1,024 characters. A counter under the field shows how many remain.
Set the options you need, described in the two sections below.
Under Timing, leave Now selected, or choose Later and set a date and time.
Click Send.
A banner at the top of the window states who will receive the message: all mobile app users who subscribed for notifications.
Tip: If Push notification does not appear in the Messaging menu, your church's app is not switched on yet. See How do I enable the mobile app?
Mark a notification as important
The Important? toggle overrides the notification settings a member has chosen on their own device. Turning it on ignores their quiet hours and their notification preferences, so the message is delivered even during hours they have silenced.
Warning: Use Important? sparingly. It is meant for a genuine, time-sensitive announcement such as a weather closure or a safety message. Members who receive routine notifications overnight after setting quiet hours tend to turn notifications off altogether, which costs you every future message rather than just that one.
Add an action button
Turning on Action Button? reveals options for where the notification should take the member when they tap it. You can point it at a URL, a screen inside the app, or a form.
The button's label is yours to set. Members see Open where no label is given.
Schedule a notification for later
Under Timing, choose Later and set the date and time you want the notification to go out. Scheduled notifications can be reviewed at Messaging > Scheduled notifications.
Push notifications cannot be set to repeat on a schedule.
Discard Draft deletes the notification you are working on. Cancel closes the window and keeps it as a draft.
Everything you have sent can be reviewed at Settings & Tools (Cog icon in the tool-bar) > Communication > Push Notifications, and in Messaging > Message history.
What members control on their own devices
How members are asked for permission
The app does not fire the device's permission prompt the moment it opens. Instead, when a member reaches the home screen it shows a friendly sheet titled Stay in the loop, explaining that they can be notified about events, messages and reminders from their church, with Enable notifications and Not now. Only Enable notifications triggers the real device prompt.
The app asks at most three times over the life of the install, with a seven-day gap after each Not now. After that it stops asking, and it also stops if the member has permanently denied notifications at the device level, since the system prompt would no longer appear.
Tip: A member who tapped Not now does not have to wait for the app to ask again. Settings > Preferences > Push Notifications takes them straight to the controls at any time.
The notification settings a member can change
In the app, Settings > Preferences > Push Notifications opens the notifications screen. It holds three things:
Permission - shows the device's answer as Granted, Denied or Unknown, and taps through to the right place to change it.
What You Get - a channel list. Today it holds Announcements, covering news and updates from the church, which is the channel your push notifications are delivered on.
Quiet Hours - a toggle with Start and End times, which silences notifications overnight or during any window the member sets.
These settings belong to the device, not to the account. A member with a phone and a tablet sets them separately on each. Quiet hours are enforced on the server rather than on the device, which means a message sent during a member's quiet hours is held back at the source.
The toggles stay usable even when the device has denied permission. The preference is remembered and takes effect the moment permission is granted, so a member never loses a setting by turning notifications off for a while.
Badges and images
A notification can carry an image, and tapping one takes the member to whatever the message points at.
The count of unread inbox messages drives both the Inbox badge in the app's side menu and the badge on the app icon itself, so those two can never disagree. Both clear as the member reads their messages.
If a member is not receiving notifications
Work through these in order. Each one rules out a cause, and the last step separates a delivery problem from a sending problem.
Check Settings > Preferences > Push Notifications and read the Permission row. If it says Denied, notifications cannot arrive until that is changed on the device.
Check the Announcements channel under What You Get is on.
Check Quiet Hours. A member who says notifications stop overnight has quiet hours switched on.
Ask whether they set their preferences on a different device. These settings are per device, so a tablet can still be buzzing after a phone has been silenced.
Open Settings > About this app and check the Push token row. A dash instead of a value means the device has no push token registered, so no notification could reach it whatever you send.
Compare against the member's Inbox. If the message is there, it was sent and delivered to their account, and the problem is device-side notification display rather than sending.
Tip: The About this app screen has a copy action in its header that puts every diagnostic row on the clipboard at once. Asking a member to tap it and paste the result saves several rounds of questions.