APP: Push Notification Troubleshooting
Not receiving pushes?
ASK THESE QUESTIONS:
- Are they positive they have notifications enabled?
- Is this problem across the board on all devices or just a few people that have come forward and said they aren’t seeing pushes?
- Do you know what kind of devices they are using?
*If a customer approaches staff with a problem on their App, try to have staff collect the email address they used upon opening the Rewards the first time. If they can’t remember what email address was used, it’s listed in the Settings module within the App. We can track some of the individual usage and make sure they’re receiving pushes.
How Pushes Appear On A Device:
- Device turned off & then on after missing the timeframe of the original push : Push will be delayed until the device is turned back on, all items received by the device are processed in sequential order of when they were received. They should be delivered to the device in this order.
- Device Not In Use/black lock screen: Depends on user’s individual settings. They can pop up like a text, or just make the notification light blink. Either way, the push will appear in the notification center drop down menu. (Unless notifications have been disabled.)
- Device In Use; For IOS, the push will appear as a banner across the top of the screen for just a couple seconds. (The length of time the banner appears is determined by Apple). Android, the push will be seen by an added icon arriving in the phones top task bar. All pushes will appear within the App notifications center.
- Red Circular Icon Badge; A red circular badge will appear on the top right of the App icon with a number denoting the number of unread notifications within the App.
*If someone has their notifications turned off on their device, they will not receive any pop up messages or banners. Only the red badge will appear on the icon.
These are just some things to keep in mind any time a customer approaches with an App issue. More than likely their issues will be device specific. Things really vary depending on what platform their device uses and what model device they own. In those instances, the customer will just need to troubleshoot their own device and it won’t be anything we need to fix on our end. A lot of times it just boils down to how they have their individual Settings on their device. On the newer iPhones, I know you can chose how your notifications appear for each individual App. Some customers will disable automatic updates on their phone, and those that do, need to make sure to update manually within stores. The last resort is to uninstall and reinstall. They won’t lose any data/punches by doing this.
Newer phones have the capability of choosing how a push will appear from App to App. They’ll want to check their device settings to make sure it’s actually on.
Also, if staff members were around at the time of the initial launch of the App and may have had the dev/test App downloaded and hadn’t removed it before downloading the live version of the App from the App Store or Google Play, they’ll need to uninstall and reinstall. When the live App is written over the test App, it will interfere with push notifications and other App updates. If they’re unsure if they wrote over the test App with the live version, the safe bet is to uninstall and reinstall.
If they try everything and it’s not working, it’s really important to gather as much information from them as possible to help us guide us to a solution.