Push notification workflow for Android and iOS

Hi Friends,

Every day we are receiving many push notification from several applications. And I'm always thinking that how this push notification comes to our devices, where they got such content to attract us for engaging application and many more. If these type of queries about push notifications bombarding on your mind also, then have patience and let go together to find answer of all these questions one by one.

Since Marketer , growth hackers and all who wants to engage their users more effectively and more interactively, they have analyzed long ago that Smartphones are the key device in future for user engagement and now the world realize the same as we are more on more become handy of Smartphones and iPhone.

In current scenario, simply we can say that technology is one who leading the world and users engagement is basic need of any organization or company.To engage the targeted audience with the application, best way is push notification. Since there is one other way also called as "In App message" but due to dependency of application must be in open state for In App message, Push notification is leading the market overAll.

So let's move further to understand the basic concept of "what is exactly Push notification and how it works?".

What is Exactly Push Notification?

Push Notification is nothing but a message coming from respective Gateways such as

• For Android: Gateway is Firebase Cloud Messaging ( FCM ) or Google Cloud Messaging ( GCM )

• For iOS: Gateway is Apple Push Notification service ( APNs ).

It’s basically acting same as your SMS but coming from your App instead of Mobile number but it's far rich in terms of content as compared to SMS.

Push notification always come on Notification bar only, but provide ability to marketer that he/she decides redirection after click on push notification to take their users to browser via url, some specific page of application via deep-link or simply a application home page.

Previously it is only in basic format such as title and description, But now it's present with rich content such as big image, GIF, audio, video, carousel etc..

How Push Notification works?

Let's check how push notification works, with some technical words:

The work flow of Push notification is as follow:

1. When Application is installed and launched, it’s communicate with respective gateways such FCM, GCM or APNs and request for Token. 
2. After request come from device, Gateway sent one Token for that device 
3. This token saved at server level i.e. token sent from device to server (which handling push notification sending content) 
4. Next time when Push notification content ready to sent, server connects to respective gateway and sent all content along with token. 
5. And then gateway sent that push notification to respective device with the help of Token

If we can represent in work flow diagram, it’s look like given below for android:

And for iOS, it's work flow will be look like this:



This is basic work flow of push notification for android and iOS .

Can you guys not having question that what are the various types of push notification available in market so that we can use them and engage our application users to convert them as our conversion users.

There is lots of variety in push notification such as:

1. Normal i.e. title and description 
2. List View i.e. title and multiple list as description 
3. Big image i.e. title, description and big image 
4. Interactive buttons i.e. title, description, big image (optional), action buttons (max 3 for Android & max 5 for iOS) 
5. Carousel i.e. multiple images (in a horizontal scroll) and information along with title, description

Above all types of push notifications are available for both Android and iOS.

But in iOS, there is one extra level of rich support available as follow

1. Audio i.e. play audio in Notification 
2. Video i.e. play video in Notification

This is all about Push notifications and it's working along with it's various types, In next blog we'll catch up with "use case of each type of push notifications", "what is deep-link and how deep-links play important roles?" and "how they going to add value to your business?".

So let's end up here with assumption that this blog hopefully gives you some or more clarity on push notifications.

And if you like this blog then please share it on twitter, facebook and linkedIn, spread it out as much as you can so that everyone get aware of  push notifications.

--Pradeep Gupta