If you are offering Zendesk Chat through your own mobile app, you can enable push notifications to alert customers to responses and updates to their chats.
For Zendesk Chat accounts on paying plans, push notifications can be configured to notify the user even when the app is in the background on their mobile device. These notifications can be enabled for multiple mobile apps, if needed.
This article describes the tasks required by administrators to enable Chat push notifications for their mobile apps, and includes the following topics:
- Preparing to add the app
- Enabling push notifications on your mobile app
- Editing an app’s information
- Disabling push notifications for an app
- Testing push notifications
- Note for former users of Chat Mobile SDK V1
Preparing to add the app
Before your developers can turn on push notifications, a Chat admin must upload a FCM server key (for Android) or a PEM certificate (for iOS) to the Chat account.
The developers should provide you with the FCM server key or PEM certificate file. If they have questions, refer them to the following docs on the Zendesk developer portal:
Enabling push notifications on your mobile app
To enable push notifications, administrators must add their mobile apps to the Mobile SDK list, which is accessed through your Chat dashboard. When an app is added to this list, an app ID is generated, which is then shared with your mobile development team.
To add an app to the Mobile SDK list
- On your Chat dashboard, go to Settings > Account > API & SDKs.
- In the Mobile SDK section, click Add App.
- On the Add App page, enter your app’s information, including:
- Name: A name for your app that developers and other administrators will recognize.
- Description: A brief statement about what the app does.
-
FCM server key (for Android) and/or upload a PEM certificate (for iOS).
- Click Save Changes.
Your app is now created, and assigned an App ID.
Inform your development team that the key or certificate has been uploaded. After receiving this confirmation, they must make changes to the app code to enable push notifications. For more information, refer them to the developer docs linked above.
Editing an app’s information
You can edit the Name and Description assigned to your mobile app, as described in Enabling push notifications on your mobile app, above.
To edit an existing app's settings
- In the dashboard, go to Settings > Account > API & SDKs.
- In the Mobile SDK section, click on the app you'd like to edit.
- On the Edit app page, make your changes, then click Save Changes.
Disabling push notifications for an app
If you no longer want to offer Chat push notifications for a mobile app, you can remove it from the Mobile SDK list.
Once an app is deleted, visitors using this app ID will no longer receive push notifications from your service. You cannot create another mobile SDK app with the same app ID, and the deletion is irreversible.
To delete one or more app
- In the dashboard, go to Settings > Account > API & SDKs.
- In the Mobile SDK section, select the app(s) you'd like to delete.
- Click Delete Selected.
Testing push notifications
If your app is available on iOS devices, you can test your push notifications before making them available through your active app.
To send push notifications to the test environment (iOS only)
- In the dashboard, go to Settings > Account > API & SDKs
- In the Mobile SDK section, click on the app which you'd like to send push notifications to the test environment
- In the iOS section, select For APNs Sandbox.
- Click the Save Changes button.
Note for former users of Chat Mobile SDK V1
If you previously used the Chat Mobile SDK V1, you may find that you cannot delete one of the apps called "App 1" in my account.
If you have an app using the Mobile SDK V1 created on the old Mobile SDK settings experience, we've migrated the existing app to the new experience. You can easily identify it by looking for its pre-assigned name "App 1" (you can change this in the app's settings).
We've disabled the deletion for this app on your dashboard as it's using the older Mobile SDK version that's no longer allowed to be added as a new app if deleted accidentally.
If you wish to deactivate this app:
- Click App 1 in the Mobile SDK section
- Click Edit App.
- Remove the FCM server key and/or the PEM file.
- Click Save Changes.
13 Comments
Has anyone else seen it occur that when the app is launched cold from a Zendesk Chat push notification that the chat view opens empty without any UI except the nav header and the lower square with the number of notifications?
Hey Jason,
How often does this issue occur? I haven't seen any other reports of this issue on my end related to this. Any chance you could provide a screenshot of what you're experiencing?
Thanks!
Hi Brett,
Every time the app is launched cold from a push notification. If the app is already running the chat window loads fine. Attached are some screenshots.
-J
I have the same problem and it occurs if I customize UI at the app launch
Hey Anton,
I'm going to get a ticket created on your behalf so our customer advocacy team can dig into this further.
You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Cheers!
Hey, we have been using the Zendesk Chat SDK V1 with our react native app - without push notification so far. Now I integrated all settings for supporting push notification for iOS and Android, but don't receive anything on the app side. Tested on device, with debug and release build, both iOS and Android. Unfortunately, nothing coming through.
I tested the combined PEM for iOS against the apple production endpoint and this is OK. I set up the app with FCM server key for Android and the combined PEM for iOS - however with a demo account to first test everything through before integrating it our production account.
- Is there any way to identify on the Zendesk panel side, if push notification are being sent out?
- Is there maybe any setting on the Zendesk panel side, that I have overlooked?
- Could the demo account be an issue?
- The V1 SDK should be still ok to use for this - we just use it with one single app?
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks!
I didn't receive push notification if i killed the app, can anyone help with this?
Hi there! It looks like you have an open ticket right now where you are working with a member of our team who is an expert on the SDKs. There is some code that he has asked you to provide, so once you do that, we can further assist in that ticket.
I was just trying to add push notification using chat SDK...but no luck. I just came across one question and that is I'm running on a trial mode of zendesk would that be an issue for the push notification feature? or developers are allowed to test the push notification feature on trial mode as well?
Looking forward to hearing from you guys.
Hi Maulik Pandya! I'm not aware of any limitations for trialers, however there could be some things specific to your account that would prevent this from working properly. I would recommend reaching out to our Advocacy team from within your instance (Help widget on the right side) and they will be able to see if there are any limitations for you!
Hello Greg - Community Manager I have tried to use that Help widget but didn't found anything useful by asking a few questions. I would be really thankful if you could check this with your internal resources or redirect me on another way to get an answer to my question.
Hi Maulik Pandya, apologies for the confusion! You can chat with a live agent through the widget, which is what I would suggest, since there are account-specific limitations that may be affecting your instance. I have checked and I have not found any limitations. If you could share the specifics of the problem you're running into, I may be able to help here as well! Please provide as much information as possible, without disclosing any sensitive data.
Hello Zendesk Support Team,
We are using paid plan and still unable to get push notification in android, while its working for iOS.
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