Push Notifications

Introduction

Push notifications, a Catlayst Cloud Scale component, are remote notifications that an application provider can send to the users of their application, even when the application is not actively running on the user device. These notifications are pushed from the server either at scheduled times or whenever you require them to be sent, to the target users that you specify. Push notifications can contain promotional content like alerts about the latest events, offers, or updates related to your business, or actionable elements for the user to re-engage with your application. They are therefore a crucial part of a mobile or a web application, as they provide value to the end users and strengthen your communications with them.

Catalyst provides you with an easy way to integrate push notifications into your web and iOS applications. For web applications, you can incorporate a code snippet that Catalyst provides into your application’s source to enable push notifications in it. For iOS applications, you can easily authenticate your app’s APNs configuration with Catalyst, and allow it to forward the push messages that you require. You can also send test notifications to select devices from the Catalyst console for both web and iOS applications, to verify if they are enabled and are working correctly.

You can use Catalyst APIs to register for push notifications in your iOS and web applications and send notifications to the user devices. For further information, refer to the SDK documentation and the API documentation. You can find information about hosting Catalyst applications on the Device Management and Web Client Hosting help pages.

Purpose

Catalyst servers make the task of incorporating push notifications in your iOS apps a lot easier by acting as an intermediary between you and Apple. Catalyst’s push notification API forwards your push messages to Apple on your behalf, and provides you with the response of the request. Additionally, for iOS apps, you can test push notifications both in development and production modes from the Catalyst console.

For web applications, you can use the code snippet provided in the Catalyst console to define the appearance and action of your push notifications through your own logic and incorporate them into your application’s source. Once configured, you can send test push notifications to the email addresses of select users to verify that they are working.