Push notification

Push notification is the ability of a mobile device to receive messages that are pushed from a server. Notifications are received regardless of whether the application is currently running.

Notifications can take several forms, and are platform-dependent:

Alert: a pop-up text message
Badge, Tile: a graphical representation that includes a short text or image
Banner, Toast: a pop-up text message at the top of the device display that disappears after it has been read
Audio alert

The IBM MobileFirst™ Platform Foundation unified push notification mechanism enables sending of mobile notifications to mobile devices. Notifications are sent through the vendor infrastructure. For example, iPhone notifications are sent from the MobileFirst Server to specialized Apple servers, and from there to the relevant phones. The unified push notification mechanism makes the entire process of communicating with the users and devices completely transparent to the developer.

The following diagram shows an example of a push notification mechanism where notifications are sent from the MobileFirst Server to specialized servers or gateways and from there to the relevant phones.

Figure 1. Push notification mechanism

Diagram: notifications are sent from the MobileFirst Server to specialized servers or gateways and from there to the relevant phones.

Push notification currently works for SMS, WNS, iOS and Android. iOS apps use the Apple Push Notification Service (APNs), Android apps use Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), and Windows apps use Windows Push Notification Services (WNS). For more information about setting up push notification for each platform, see Setting up push notifications.

Proxy settings

Use the proxy settings to set the optional proxy through which notifications are sent to Android

APNs and GCM. You can set the proxy by using the Android

push.apns.proxy.* and push.gcm.proxy.* configuration properties. For more information, see List of JNDI properties for MobileFirst Server push service.

Note: WNS does not have proxy support.

Architecture

Unlike other IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation services, the push server requires outbound connections to Apple and Google servers using ports that are defined by these companies.