Notify users about new content

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1

I have a news section in my app. How can I tell users to check the app for new content when push notifications apparently are not an option?

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2

Do you only want to notify when there is new content or do you want to do it periodically? Where would these notifications go? To the users’ emails?

3

Ideally something would pop up on the user’s phone indicating there’s new content like a banner or a counter on the app icon. Or maybe a text message? Is it possible to send a chat message to all users at the same time to notify them, or will this end up in a confusing group chat? If this is not possible, I will probably have to notify via email. I’d like to avoid sending out newsletters because what’s the point of having a news feature when I already tell them the news in advance. We’ll try to post periodically, but I’d like the notification to be immediate. I want to tell them “hey, check your app, we’ve got news for you”. A second option could be to notify them in-app to check the news section, but they might never find out, if we don’t tell them to check their app.

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4

You could integrate with Zapier using their SMS or Email apps, so when you add a new new post it’ll send a notification to your users.

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5

Sounds like a plan… I’ll check it out.

6

I was thinking if it is possible to

  1. change the color of the TAB
  2. add number over the TAB

The use case would be to inform user when they log in the APP, the TAB with new content will be highlighted in a different color and the number over the TAB will indicate how many items have been added since last visit…example is like what most apps like WhatsApp and facebook do.
Thanks

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7

Like this?

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8

What @chinna said is doable, but you would need to give some thoughts to if you want to notify people every time there’s a new post. If you add multiple lines at a time then it may become too much and you would want to group them.

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9

Yes. Exactly. Will try it. Thanks

1 Like
10

Yes, I sometimes will be adding several items at a time and I wouldn’t want to send a notification for each line, just one for the whole bunch. How do I group them then?

12

So I figured out that I can add CSS via Rich Text, but I can only do so in a detail screen view, and this is the only place where it is visible. As soon as I leave the detail screen the alert is gone. :grimacing: Is there a tutorial for this?

13

You would have to add it to every details screen. There’s no way around that.

14

My tab screens are mainly lists, not detail screens. So I could never see the notification when I’m in the overview. :confused:

15

Well then it’s a no go. Nowadays I mostly use details screen for my apps.

1 Like
16

correct me if I’m wrong: with “inline list” components, details screens can look pretty much like list-styled tab screens.
One downside: you cannot have the “plus symbol” to open the “Add form” in details screens, but only actions to open forms.

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17

yeah I noticed when I saw the video of the guy who implemented the counter. I was confused why it looked like a list but also like a detail screen. I want users with editor status to be able to add news to the section that will be approved by an admin before they appear in the frontend. Now that you clarified the differences I believe I should ditch the idea of having a modified tab icon and rather try to find out how I can group a bunch of new entries for a combined zapier notification.

18

Actually I like a floating button with the plus icon more than the top-left add, it’s more visible to users.

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19

Hey, not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but I used a user-specific date/time “Timestamp” column to compare the user’s last visit to the newsfeed and when the newsfeed is updated. If the user has been there since the latest update, the Newsfeed tab looks normal. If a new item was added to the newsfeed since the visitor’s last visit, this shows under the tab name: :bell: New Posts!

I’ve been toying around with the idea of texts/email notifications too, but my users are busy people with lots of things constantly competing for their attention, and so I worry that notifications may backfire and make them want to engage less. So this feels less intrusive. At least that’s what my plan is for now.

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20

This is an important point and well said.

3 Likes
21

I am still struggling with this…so I add the following


  button[aria-label="Notifications"]::before {
  content: "{N}";
  position: absolute;
  font-size: 9px;
  font-weight: 800;
  color: white;
  padding: 1px;
  top: 6px;
  right: 25px;
  z-index: 1;
  height: 16px;
  width: 16px;
  background-color: red;
  border-radius: 70%;
}
into the Rich Text Data...do I change {N} to a number, eg 3 to see that the red number 3 appears in the TAB?
But I did not see any changes.