XF 2.1 Push Notifications: Many users report they have stopped.

[BIG LLC]

Today a user reported that they disabled Push Notifications a few weeks ago and then enabled them again.

After a few minutes of notifications running fine, they stopped going out.

Now they report that the people they have talked to on the site said Push Notifications stopped working months ago.

Yay!

Has anyone had this issue? What might we do to troubleshoot it? Anything we should look for that might be interfering with them?

All advice appreciated.

 

[BIG LLC]

I enabled them, and they seem to have worked for roughly 40 minutes, but I have now stopped receiving them.

 

[BIG LLC]

Is there a definitive list of rules for when Push Notifications are sent out? Trying to troubleshoot this and I cannot tell if it is working as designed or going haywire.

Thanks.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Is there a definitive list of rules for when Push Notifications are sent out? Trying to troubleshoot this and I cannot tell if it is working as designed or going haywire.

Thanks.

Presumably the same as email notifications?

So if a user doesn’t visit the forum after getting a notification, then they would stop for that specific thread?

I hope that’s how it works anyway

 

[Chris D]

Kind of but it's intrinsically tied to the alerts system.

If you get an alert (the bell icon on the forum) there should be a push notification to go along with it if you have enabled push notifications.

We're not shy about logging push notification errors in case there are timeouts or other errors with the request so usually any kind of failure should be logged.

We wouldn't generally expect it to work for a bit then stop working, certainly not without errors being logged.

 

[BIG LLC]

Not a single error in the log.

 

[BIG LLC]

Was this addressed in 2.2? We can get up to tens of thousands of users on during a big event/breaking news.

Implemented - Push notifications should use a queue to send them asynchronously (like emails)

This is something in-between a bug report and a feature suggestion and I feel bad for bringing this up so late in the release process of XenForo 2.1. I just didn't notice this potential issue earlier but I think it could be important especially (but not only) for bigger forums. The issue I see...

xenforo.com

I disabled and renabled just about anything that might be related, and they seem to be working for me now, but other users still report they are broken.

I know they don't work for Safari on Mac, but are there any other Mac-related hurdles?

 

[BIG LLC]

And they've stopped again.

 

[jeb35]

Push notifications won't work on anything IOS. If you are having issues with push notifications check to make sure usergroup permissions are set correctly and that you don't have any addons installed that could possibly be interferring with the process, disable all addons to test.

 

[BIG LLC]

"Disable all addons" is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut. Dropping features out from under thousands of registered users and hundreds of thousands of site visitors isn't really an option.

But we have a test server so I am setting that up. But of course it won't replicate the volume of database requests etc, so it's not a true simulation.

Usergroup permissions are fine. Push Notifications work for a short time, but die after a while.

 

[beerForo]

"Disable all addons" is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut. Dropping features out from under thousands of registered users and hundreds of thousands of site visitors isn't really an option.

Turn the site off first, that is one click. Test, turn back on. 20 seconds.

 

[crondoc]

I'm struggling setting up push notifications.

Similar to an email alert, should the push notification arrive soon after the action that would provoke a push, has occurred? For example a reply to a post.

So far:
Push notifications are turned on in the ACP.
Group permissions set to allow.
Individual users have allowed push notifications.
GMP 6.0.0 installed on PHP 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3.
Have tried using all three versions of PHP available.
Users are replying to threads but not receiving push notifications.

Have I missed anything? Will the push notifications arrive if a user has the forum open in a browser?

(I've just turned on push notifications for xenforo for as well!)

 

[jeb35]

I get them instantly on my phone and browser on pc. Do you have any addons installed that may be interferring? If the users are actually setup correctly then each user would get an option on the screen that the website was offering push notifications and that they need to accept in order for them to start.

 

[crondoc]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, they're getting the offer of the push notifications (Im testing this with multiple user accounts myself).
I dont have any add-ons installed. Im setting up a new site with pending migration from vBulletin.

Interestingly, I got an email notification from this website when you replied to this thread, but no push notification, even though Im logged in on Chrome/Windows 10 and on Chrome/Android Moto G8 phone and I have push enabled.

 

[jeb35]

Check your chrome options for notifications to make sure they aren't disabled. They are under site settings under privacy and security.

 

[crondoc]

Thanks for the suggestion. I had tried that as well as both devices. Reset permissions and clicked "enable push notifications" as well for both xenforo.com and for our own forum.

I get push notifications from other websites/apps on my phone but I dont on my desktop (by choice).
I'll subscribe to a few other websites to see if I can get them on my desktop.

 

[jeb35]

I got an immediate push notification on my desktop when you replied. Something is up with your website or settings.

 

[crondoc]

Wow, ok. 3 hours into it now, this is baffling.
Thanks for your replies.

 

[crondoc]

Right, finally sorted this. On my phone I had to allow notifications globally in android settings - even though some apps were able to over ride this. On Windows I reset Chrome and it worked.