Push Notification Best Practices

This document describes various best practices to consider when working with push notifications.

# In this article

# Tracking uninstalls

Iterable automatically tracks app uninstalls, as follows:

1. You send a push campaign to a user.
2. 12 hours later, Iterable sends a "ghost push" (not visible or audible) to that same user.
3. If the app has been uninstalled and the ghost push cannot be delivered, Iterable tracks an uninstall.

# Migrating GCM to FCM for Android

For Android push notification, Google Cloud Manager (GCM) has been deprecated in favor of FireBase Cloud Messages (FCM). If you are on GCM, you must migrate to the new system. You can migrate an existing GCM client app on Android to Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) using the instructions in this guide. Before getting started, keep in mind the following:

• GCM and FCM SDKs cannot co-exist within an application.
• GCM tokens retrieved via GoogleCloudMessaging.register() or InstanceID.getToken() will continue to work in FCM without any modification or renewal.

Please follow this Google documentation to complete the migration.

# Renewing push certificates in Iterable

Your push notifications certificates are generally only valid for one year. Once they expire, you must renew them by creating new certificates and uploading them to Iterable.

Please follow the steps in the previous section around creating certificates. Once you have new valid certificates, you can upload them to Iterable and continue to receive push in your app.

• Apple Docs
• FCM