Overview
A Push Notification Certificate is required for all iOS and Android devices so that Push Notifications can work. The Push Notification Certificate is used to associate an app with a specific device.
Introduction
All notifications go from the App Server via a Notification Server to the recipient's device. This Notification Server (for example Apple's or Google's GCM/APN) needs to know how to contact the recipient's device and this is achieved by the use of the push notification certificate. The app server sends the actual notification along with this certificate to a Notification Server which forwards them on to the recipient's device.
Description
A Notification Server must know the address of a user's device before it can send notifications to that device. This address takes the form of a device token unique to both the device and the app. At launch time, the app communicates with the Notification Server and receives its device token, which is then forwarded to the app server and stored in its Database. The app server includes that token with any notifications it sends.
Note: The user must have allowed for push notifications on the iOS device or on the Android device.
Obtaining a new Google Push Notification certificate
- If you wish to get a new Google certificate, you will need to republish your app and upload the new APK to the Google Developer Account
Obtaining a new Apple Push Notification certificate
- While you can get this certificate from Apple through your developer account, it should be noted here that the BiznesssApps platform provides you with the option to generate a certificate without logging onto your Apple developer account, by just using the CMS GUI.
Important: Note, you can use that only if your certificate is about to expire. You will receive an email regarding a 30-day expiration notice from Apple.
- Apple allows a maximum of 2 certificates per app identifier. Thus, when you use this certificate generation option you create in essence a new certificate and the old is kept till it expires. Once the old expires, you will be using the newly created certificate for sending your push notifications.
- This procedure can come in really handy when there is an Apple Push Notification certificate-related error and you cannot send push notifications. Apart from having a soon-to-expire certificate (the certificates expire once a year), you may also have a faulty certificate. The most common cause for having a faulty cert is to get the certificate chain broken because:
- you transferred your app in some other account or
- an error occurred during the creation process
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