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By the end of this page you’ll have sent a test notification to your own device, then a push campaign, and you’ll know where to follow what happened to it.
Before you start, you need:
  • An app showing Active in Channels > Push. See Connect Firebase.
  • A device token from a test device running your app, for the test send.
  • For a campaign, contacts with an active device registered against that app. See Register device tokens.

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Send a test first

You can test at two levels, and neither test is saved to a contact.
  • An app: on the Apps tab, select Send a test (the paper-plane icon) on an Active app and paste a device token. See Connect Firebase.
  • A campaign: in the campaign’s Send a test dialog, pick a Push app and paste a device token. See Create and send a campaign.
Tests are sent in the background, and the result appears in the dialog once Firebase has answered. Accepted by the provider means Firebase took the notification for delivery, so check the device itself to confirm it arrived.

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Send a campaign

1

Create a campaign

Go to Campaigns and create a campaign. Give it a Campaign name, and under Channels, select Push. See Create a campaign.
2

Choose the audience

Select Choose audience and pick Lists, Segments or individual Contacts. Only contacts with an active device are reachable, and Brudcast shows the push reach beside the audience.For your first campaign, choose only your own contact, so the first notification goes to your own device.
3

Pick the apps

Leave Apps on every active app, or name the ones to send through. A device is reached only through the app it was registered against.
4

Write the notification

Fill in Title and Body. Both are required, and both accept merge tags. Keep them short, because devices cut long text on the lock screen. The options are covered in Write the notification below.
5

Clear the send checklist

Before you send lists anything that would stop the campaign. See Send checklist.
6

Send

Select Send to send now, or schedule it. See Create and send a campaign.

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Write the notification

A campaign’s push content has a Title and a Body, both required, plus an optional Image URL and Click URL. Click URL is sent to your app in the notification’s data as click_url, unless you set a click_url data key yourself. On Android and iOS your app decides what to do with it. On the web the browser opens it when the notification is clicked, as long as it starts with https://. Data has limits, and a message that breaks them is refused: Reserved keys are refused when you save the campaign, because Firebase rejects any message carrying one, so a single reserved key would make every device in the campaign fail. Expires after offers Only if the device is reachable now (no retrying, so an offline device never gets it), 1 hour, 6 hours, 1 day (default), 3 days, 1 week, and 4 weeks, which is the maximum at 28 days. The campaign blocks are covered in Write content for each channel.

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What happens next

Before a push campaign sends, Brudcast checks that:
  • the push content has a title and a body,
  • at least one of the campaign’s apps is Active, and every app you picked is, and
  • the audience has at least one active device registered against those apps.
A contact is reachable on push when it has an active device registered against one of the campaign’s apps. Each device gets its own notification and counts as one notification, so a contact with a phone and a tablet counts twice. Campaign results label push Accepted where email says Delivered, because Firebase confirms only that it took the notification. See Accepted, not delivered and Campaign results.

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Troubleshooting

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Apps and credentials

Why: Firebase rejected the service account key, either during validation or during a send, and its reason is shown under the status in the Apps table. The usual causes are a service account without the Firebase Cloud Messaging API Admin role, a key that was deleted in Google Cloud, or the Firebase Cloud Messaging API being turned off for the project.Fix: correct the role, and check that the Firebase Cloud Messaging API is enabled under APIs & Services in the Google Cloud console. Then select Validate again in the app’s More actions menu, or use Replace credential with a new key. See Connect Firebase.
Why: validation usually takes a few seconds. Much longer, and the check may not have completed.Fix: select Validate again in the app’s More actions menu. If nothing changes, email support@brudcast.com.
Why: your organization has no Push subscription, so apps can’t be added.Fix: pick a Push plan in Billing & Plans. See Plans and subscriptions.

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Campaigns that won’t send

Why: no app has the status Active, so the campaign has nothing to send through.Fix: connect an app, or fix one showing Credential invalid.
Why: the send checklist found no app for the campaign’s push block.Fix: choose apps in Apps, or leave All active apps.
Why: the send checklist found an empty Title or Body.Fix: fill in both. Merge tags alone can leave a field empty for some contacts, so add fixed text as well.
Why: Firebase refused the notification itself. In a campaign this stops the push part at the first failure.Fix: check the data keys and the Image URL against the limits above.
Why: Firebase is limiting how fast this project can send.Fix: wait and try again.

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Devices and delivery

Why: a device is reached only through the app it was registered against, and only while its status is active. The tokens may belong to an app you didn’t pick, the devices may be inactive or expired, their app may be Disabled, or the contacts may not be in the audience.Fix: check the devices on a few contacts and compare their app with the campaign’s Apps field. See Register device tokens.
Why: Firebase doesn’t recognize the token for this project. The app may have been uninstalled, Firebase may have replaced the token, or the token belongs to another project.Fix: register a fresh token from the device. During campaigns Brudcast expires tokens like this by itself and sends the push.token_invalidated webhook.
Why: Firebase accepted the notification. It doesn’t confirm that the notification reached the device.Fix: check that the app has permission to show notifications on the device, and that the token came from an app in the same Firebase project.

Push overview

How apps, devices and campaigns fit together.

Register device tokens

Store each device’s token on its contact.

Write content for each channel

Send push alongside email and SMS.

Campaign results

Follow what happened after you send.