Notifications iOS

Configure push notifications via Helpshift

Notifications can be sent to your users when you reply to an issue submitted by them. In addition to the expected Push Notification behavior on iOS, you can customize your notifications to display a numbered badge on your App icon or play a sound alert when a notification is received.

If your app does not already use push, you will need to enable push for your app. To enable push notification in your application you need to add APNS registration code to your AppDelegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method:

- (BOOL) application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
   ...
   UIUserNotificationType notificationType = UIUserNotificationTypeBadge | UIUserNotificationTypeAlert;
   UIUserNotificationSettings *notificationSettings = [UIUserNotificationSettings settingsForTypes:notificationType categories:nil];
   [[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerUserNotificationSettings:notificationSettings];
   [[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerForRemoteNotifications];
   ...
}

- (BOOL) application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
  ...
  UNUserNotificationCenter *center = [UNUserNotificationCenter currentNotificationCenter];
  center.delegate = self;
  [center requestAuthorizationWithOptions:(UNAuthorizationOptionBadge | UNAuthorizationOptionSound | UNAuthorizationOptionAlert)
                                                                   completionHandler:^(BOOL granted, NSError *_Nullable error) {
                          ...
                      }];
  [UIApplication sharedApplication registerForRemoteNotifications];
  ...
}

Configure Helpshift's push notification service in the Helpshift admin interface

You can configure this in 4 simple steps:

Setup your application with Apple and enable Push notifications.

You need to generate certificates for APNS on Apple's portal that you can later provide to Helpshift. This lets Helpshift send push notifications to your users. Apple has moved away from old type of certificates to Apple Push Notification service SSL. There is another option to create Apple Push Notification Authentication Key, but Helpshift does not support this option yet. Its also possible that you still have the old type of certificate that has not yet expired, this is also supported by Helpshift.

Apple provides two variations of Apple Push Notification service SSL

• Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox)
• Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production)

After creating your certificate, download it. Double click on it to import it to the Keychain Access Application. In the Keychain Access Application, right click on the certificate that was just added, and click export it in .p12 format. Please provide a password while exporting the certificate since we do not accept empty passwords. (Note that if your development private key is not present in Keychain Access, you will not be able to export it in .p12 format.) After export, login and upload the .p12 file in your app in the Helpshift admin panel. Provide the same password you used while exporting to .p12 format.

Please note that you need to use the same bundle identifier in the app as the one you used to create the APNS certificate.

You can configure whether to send a badge or not, and sound alerts if you provided custom sounds bundled with your app to handle notifications. Save it and you're all set.

Development (Sandbox) mode vs. Production mode

When you build and run your app from Xcode, it is in development (Sandbox) mode. To test push notifications from Helpshift in this mode make sure you choose 'Development Mode' while uploading either of the above two certificate types.

When you publish your app and download from App Store, your app is in Production mode. To test push notifications from Helpshift in production mode make sure you choose 'Production Mode' while uploading a certificate of 'Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production)' type. Sandbox mode certificate will not work on a production environment.

We do not support using the same certificate for both sandbox and production apps. In these cases we recommend you create two separate apps on our dashboard, one in 'Production mode' and the other in 'Development mode'. While testing please use the credentials of the developement mode app. When you are ready to publish, please replace the credentials with those of the production level app.

Configure the Helpshift Unity SDK to handle notifications

In built support

Helpshift Unity plugin comes with built-in support for Push notifications.

If you want to use the Helpshift push notification handling, please register your application to receive push notifications as documented here. The Helpshift SDK overrides the UnityAppController class to listen to the application delegates for Push notifications and calls the appropriate Helpshift APIs. If you already have a UnityAppController child class, please make sure it inherits from the HsUnityAppController class.

Manual support

- (void) application:(UIApplication *)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken {
    [HelpshiftCore registerDeviceToken:deviceToken];
}

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
    ...
    if(launchOptions[UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey]) {
        NSDictionary *userInfo = launchOptions[UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey];
        if([[userInfo objectForKey:@"origin"] isEqualToString:@"helpshift"]) {
            [HelpshiftCore handleRemoteNotification:userInfo
                                        isAppLaunch:true
                                     withController:self.window.rootViewController];
        }
    } else if(launchOptions[UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocalNotificationKey]) {
        [self application:application didReceiveLocalNotification:launchOptions[UIApplicationLaunchOptionsLocalNotificationKey]];
    }
    ...
}

- (void) application:(UIApplication *)application didReceiveRemoteNotification:(NSDictionary *)userInfo {
    if([[userInfo objectForKey:@"origin"] isEqualToString:@"helpshift"]) {
        [HelpshiftCore handleRemoteNotification:userInfo
                                isAppLaunch:false
                             withController:self.window.rootViewController];
    }
}

- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setApplicationIconBadgeNumber:0];
}

- (void) application:(UIApplication *)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken {
    [HelpshiftCore registerDeviceToken:deviceToken];
}

- (void) userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center
  willPresentNotification:(UNNotification *)notification
  withCompletionHandler:(void (^)(UNNotificationPresentationOptions options))completionHandler {
  if([[notification.request.content.userInfo objectForKey:@"origin"] isEqualToString:@"helpshift"]) {
    [HelpshiftCore handleNotificationWithUserInfoDictionary:notification.request.content.userInfo
                                                isAppLaunch:false
                                             withController:self.window.rootViewController];
  }
  completionHandler(...);
}

- (void) userNotificationCenter:(UNUserNotificationCenter *)center didReceiveNotificationResponse:(UNNotificationResponse *)response withCompletionHandler:(void (^)(void))completionHandler {
  if([[response.notification.request.content.userInfo objectForKey:@"origin"] isEqualToString:@"helpshift"]) {
      [HelpshiftCore handleNotificationResponseWithActionIdentifier:response.actionIdentifier
                                      userInfo:response.notification.request.content.userInfo
                                                          completionHandler:completionHandler];
  }
  completionHandler();
}

- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setApplicationIconBadgeNumber:0];
}

In-app notifications

In-app notifications are similar to Apple's push notification banners. Unlike push notifications, they appear within your app when it is in use by the user.

These notifications are sent when an agent replies to a customer's issue. Your customers can click on these banners to go straight into the conversation screen.

Configuring In-app notifications

If you do not want the in-app notifications support provided by the Helpshift SDK, please set this flag to "no". The default value of this flag is "yes" i.e in-app notifications will be enabled.
Read more about in-app notifications in the Notifications section.

Example:

private HelpshiftSdk help;
this.help = HelpshiftSdk.getInstance();
Dictionary<string, string> configMap = new Dictionary<string, string>();
configMap.Add("unityGameObject", "DemoControl");
configMap.Add("enableInAppNotification", "yes");
help.install("<API_KEY>", "<DOMAIN_NAME>", "<APP_ID>", configMap);

Showing notification count when replies are sent to the user

Via Helpshift API

If you want to show your user notifications for replies sent by the Agent to their Issues, you can use notification counts provided by the Helpshift SDK. These give you the total number of unread messages and display that number as a badge. You can get notification counts asynchronously by implementing the Helpshift delegate method didReceiveUnreadMessageCount(int count).

Notifications are typically displayed as badges inside your app where a user clicks on the help section. These badges can be displayed anywhere in your app's interface to tell the user that they have unread replies/messages from you. You can implement the "didReceiveUnreadMessageCount" delegate method like the following example:

API:
using Helpshift;
.
.
.
private HelpshiftSdk help;
this.help = HelpshiftSdk.getInstance();
help.requestUnreadMessagesCount(true);

Delegate:
public void didReceiveUnreadMessagesCount(string count) {
    // your code here
}

Via In-App Notifications

If you want to use the in-app notifications mechanism to get the count of unread notifications, you can implement the didReceiveInAppNotificationCount message handler on the Game object which you have registered at the time of install.

For example

    public void didReceiveInAppNotificationCount(string count) {
    Debug.Log("In-app Notification count : " + count);
}