The longest awaited iPhone feature is almost here, native iOS notifications, and we couldn't wait to ensure it is enabled for your Invision Community.

Invision Community 4.7.9 is iPhone push notification ready for when Apple release their latest iOS update later this month. This means you'll finally get notifications on your phone, even when you do not have your browser open, to alert you of new content on followed items and more. A feature Android owners have enjoyed for a while.

With notifications, you can have an authentic native app experience with built-in Invision Community features such as the manifest editor.

The manifest editor allows you to edit your theme icons, colours and URL for when your members add your community to their phone's homepage. This manifest file helps mobile devices understand how to display your community site when launched from the home screen.

Your members can add your community to their home screen with the share button. Once it has been added, it looks and feels like a native app downloaded from the App Store.

With Apple finally allowing native notifications and Invision Community's mobile-ready UI coupled with the manifest editor, you can have a real app experience without needing a mobile app.

We intend to bring more functionality and ease of use to mobile devices over the coming releases.

We hope you're looking forward to iOS native push notifications as much as we are!

The features discussed in this announcement are available in both Invision Community and Invision Community Classic.

View full blog entry

Huge thanks to @Daniel F for risking his iPhone by installing the latest iOS beta to get this feature working for us!

Push notifications should be supported in 3rd-party resources to make notifications from these resources to be available, right?

Yes, we just had to tweak some our our JS code to allow iPhone to register as supported to the rest of our normal notification system.

We'll update our docs, but to get iPhone notifications working you must complete the manifest in the ACP and use the 'add to home screen' feature. It won't work just with mobile safari in a tab, for example.

Beautiful!

I will explain to you why. I have a Facebook group of almost 7k members. They make it very difficult for me / almost impossible for me to mass message all of my members. I make an organic post and still the reach is barely 10%. Facebook a few months ago introduced the @ everyone tag. At first the reach was about 60-80%, but they have throttled it back down again and I am only get about a 30% reach. Tagging everyone just creates a notification in the Facebook app along with 50 other distracting notifications.

A big reason why I am trying to funnel my members into my Invision Community is that I can get a better engagement rate with them. Having native iOS notifications outside of the noise is huge.

Facebook group members need to realize they don't own any of the data in their group, you're just an admin in Facebook's toy box. Invision actually lets you own the data which is important to me.

Would it be possible to have a notification in mobile safari telling folks they can save the site to their home screen for a better user experience? I think most folks won't know that they can save the page to their home screen to have an app experience.

Example like what a real app does.

 

 

It's possible. 

https://marketplace.mendix.com/link/component/119770

Is this cloud-only? I have it working for this community, but all of my own communities still say “Push not supported” after the 4.7.9 update. 

crazy question, but where do I find manifest? I dont see it in icons?logos section of acp. 

3 minutes ago, Cruizin said:

crazy question, but where do I find manifest? I dont see it in icons?logos section of acp. 

It has moved to System -> Web App.

IPS should probably change the ACP search. Searching for “manifest” still points to Icons & Logos, where it has been removed from. 

1 hour ago, opentype said:

It has moved to System -> Web App.

IPS should probably change the ACP search. Searching for “manifest” still points to Icons & Logos, where it has been removed from. 

thank you! updating my phone to 16.4, will set up manifest and test phone notifications. This is a game changer to get members back from facebook groups. 

How can we translate the text from push notifications?

NVM, I deleted it from my pwa, reloaded it and now it works!

On 3/28/2023 at 10:39 PM, beats23 said:

Would it be possible to have a notification in mobile safari telling folks they can save the site to their home screen for a better user experience? I think most folks won't know that they can save the page to their home screen to have an app experience.

Example like what a real app does.

 

 

 

On 3/30/2023 at 7:05 AM, beats23 said:

It's possible. 

https://marketplace.mendix.com/link/component/119770

I'm working on it as application in IPS 😄