What Are Push Categories?
Push categories allow you to segment your push notifications by user interest. If an app user opts-in to push notifications, they will be subscribed to all categories of messages by default. If the user wants to, they can select individual categories to unsubscribe from to better serve their interests. Users will only receive push notifications for messages you send that are also associated with their selected categories.
Push categories are an advanced feature of the VisitApps Mobile App Studio (MAS). They have to be configured before you can use them. If you are interested in setting up push categories, please contact your VisitApps Customer Success Manager by submitting a ticket via the client portal.
How Are Push Categories Set Up?
Push categories are a feature of your app that is set up in the back end of the MAS. Once push categories are added to your VisitApps MAS, you will be able to use them for every message you send. Once categories have been enabled, you can have as many as you’d like, since there is no limit on the number an app can have.
If you wish to add or change your push categories, please contact your Customer Success Manager by sending a ticket via the client portal. Your Customer Success Manager can also help you create a strategy around which categories you should use for your messages.
How Do You Send Messages to Specific Push Categories?
Adding push categories to messages is simple. If you have push categories enabled for your app, you will see a ‘Categories’ draggable in the "Who” section of the message creation process when you are composing a new message.
If you drag the ‘Categories’ draggable to your message’s ‘Who’ tab, you will be see the option to add push categories. Selecting the ‘Categories’ field will display a dropdown menu of all your push categories. You can select multiple push categories if the message is relevant to more than one audience.
Refer to the What Are Messages and How Do I Use Them? article for information about composing and sending messages
How Do Users Select Their Categories?
When an app user downloads your app, they will be asked if they would like to receive push notifications. App users must opt-in to push notifications in order to manage their push categories.
To specify which notifications they would like to receive, users need to navigate to the message center in their app. The message center is usually found in the app’s root menu. Users can select the filter on the upper right hand corner of the screen to check or uncheck themselves from various message categories. This will determine which categories of messages they receive both as push notifications and in the message center.
