Overview

The Message Center is used by the app users to check push notifications sent to them. The home screen Message Center shortcut appears on the app home screen and takes users straight to the Messages tab when clicked. It also indicates unread push notifications with a number icon, with the use of the little red indicator that appears at the top right of the app icon.

This article provides information regarding the Message Center and how the unread messages count is calculated.

Prerequisites

• The app user must be logged to the app (not browse the app as a guest)
• The app user must be granted access to the Messages feature.

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Information

Message Center - Settings gear

When users first navigate to the Messages tab with the Subscriptions feature enabled, they will see a gear icon on the top right. On the first visit, they will also see a notification overlay describing what the gear icon does.

Upon clicking the gear icon, app users can then toggle off the subscriptions they do not wish to receive updates for and then save their changes.
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Message Center Shortcut - Unread notifications

The shortcut that appears on the home screen of the app does not indicate how many total push notifications the user has received since they last checked the Messages feature. Instead, the indicator will display a red circle when the user receives a push notification while browsing inside the app. That is, its main purpose is to notify users that they've presumably missed because they were viewing the app at the time the notification was received.

• When an app is open and active on the device screen, other notification types—like banners or pop-ups—will not appear, so they'll miss the notification unless it's indicated somewhere within the app. The Message Center shortcut will tick up in this situation. This means that if the users are browsing your app while you send a push notification, the indicator will display this red dot to alert the users that they missed a message while viewing the app.
• When an app is open in the background or force-closed, it's assumed that the user received the notification. This means any users who were outside of your app when you sent the message would have seen a pop-up, a banner at the top of their phone screen, or a badge on their app icon.  The indicator won't appear for those users, because it's assumed they've already viewed the message.

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Related Articles

• Introduction to the Group Management Add-On
• Introduction to Push Notifications
• Building the Messages Feature
• Messages - Subscriptions