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Mobile PUSH Certificate Management

Mobile PUSH Certificate Management

Owned by SUPPORT
Last updated: Dec 26, 2024
6 min read

In today's mobile Internet era, Mobile PUSH (mobile push notifications) plays a crucial role in enhancing user engagement and application activity. It can promptly deliver important information to users, such as new message reminders, event notifications, product updates, etc., enabling users to stay informed about application-related developments even when they haven't actively opened the application. Through push notifications, your application can remain in the user's line of sight, increasing user stickiness and preventing it from being forgotten due to long periods of inactivity. For our CX product, supporting custom Rebranding Apps to upload push certificates is to meet the personalized needs of diverse customers, ensuring that they can smoothly send accurate and reliable push notifications to their end-users, and guaranteeing the stable and efficient operation of the Push Notification function.

Principle Introduction

Push Principle of APNS and FCM

Both Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) for iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for Android/iOS/Web operate on a similar basis. The application server, when needing to send push notifications, first sends a request to the corresponding push service server (APNS or FCM). For authentication, it must hold the proper credentials, like a push certificate for APNS (which requires a series of steps to obtain, including generating a Certificate Signing Request) and a server key for FCM. These servers, upon receiving and authenticating the request, use unique identifiers associated with the devices. APNS relies on Device Tokens generated during iOS app installation, while FCM uses Instance IDs created when the device interacts with Google services. Based on these identifiers, the push service servers accurately dispatch the notifications to the target devices, ensuring users get the relevant messages.

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Download Certificates

Download iOS App Certificate

  1. Go to the Apple Developer Center and log in with your developer account.

Your developer account need to have the permissions to create and manage push certificates.

  1. Go to Program resources > Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, click on “Certificates”.

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  1. Click on "+" button to create a new certificate.

  1. In the Create a New Certificate page, select Services > Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production), then click on “Continue”.

  1. In the next step, select an App ID from the drop-down list, then click on “Continue”.

  1. Go to your local Mac computer, open the "Keychain Access" application and select Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority, fill in the relevant information as guided by the wizard, such as your email address, common name, etc., then choose "Save to Disk" to generate a .csr file.

  2. Back to Apple Developer Center, click on “Choose File” to upload the .csr file generated from your Mac computer, then click on “Continue”.

  1. After uploading the .csr file, the system will generate and provide a downloadable push certificate file in .p12 format. Download the file, this file will be uploaded while setting up in the CX system.

 

Download Android App Certificate

  1. Go to the Google Firebase Console and log in with your Google account.

If you do not have a project, please click on “Get started with a Firebase project” to create a project.

  1. Select a project and click it.

  1. In the Project Overview page, click on image-20241226-022315.png button to select “Project settings”.

 

  1. In the Project settings page, click on "Service accounts" tab. Under Admin SDK configuration snippet section, select Java and click on “Generate new private key” to download the key file in .json, this file will be uploaded while setting up in the CX system.

Configure Mobile PUSH Apps in CloudCX

  1. Log in to your system administrator portal https://your_cx_domain:9006, go to Advance > Mobile PUSH and click image-20241226-062912.png button.

  1. In the New PUSH notification for App page, you can do the following:

  • Input a name for the App name.

  • Ensure the toggle key for Enable New PUSH notification for App is turned on.

  • (Optional) Input a description for the Description.

  • Select Connect to Apple/Google Production PUSH Server.

  1. You can do the following to configure the FCM Setting and APNS Setting:

  • FCM Setting: Copy the private key from the downloaded .json file and paste to the Android FAC Service Account Key JSON File.

  • APNS Setting:

    • Input the Bundle identifier of iOS associated with the certificate to ensure that the system can accurately identify the iOS application corresponding to the certificate.

  • Click to upload to upload the .p12 file downloaded from Apple Developer Center.

    • Input the Apple P12 Certificate Password.

  1. Click Save. After completing the configuration, the system will perform a series of verification operations to ensure the validity of the certificates and the accuracy of the configuration.

System administrators can view the configuration status feedback on the configuration page, such as configuration success, certificate expiration, key error, etc., so as to adjust the configuration in time.

Mobile PUSH Using

Mobile iOS Push

When the push certificate of the iOS application is correctly configured in the CX product, the application server can smoothly send push requests to the APNS server. After the user's iOS device receives the push notification from the APNS, a prominent notification banner will appear at the top of the screen or on the lock screen. The notification content includes the application icon, title, subtitle (if set), and brief message content. The user can directly click on the notification to open the corresponding application program and enter the relevant function page, achieving seamless information interaction.

Mobile Android Push

Similarly, on the Android side, once the relevant certificates and the connection to the FCM service are configured, the push messages sent by the application server will quickly reach the user's Android device through the FCM server. The device will display a notification in the notification bar, and the notification style follows the Android system specifications, which can include the application icon, title, message summary, etc. The user can pull down the notification bar to view the detailed notification content, and click on the notification to launch the application or directly jump to the specified page within the application, ensuring that the user does not miss any important information.