Push Alerts Enabled devices

Q: What’s the difference between Push Enabled and Push Alerts Enabled devices? 

A: 

There are three types of devices registered with Pushwoosh: 

1. Total Devices include all devices that were registered with Pushwoosh and were active within the last 90 days. They may or may not have push tokens. Devices with no push tokens are reachable with In-App Messages. 
2. Push Enabled are devices with push tokens associated. Push token is a unique key that identifies an app on a specific device; they are issued by cloud gateways and used to deliver push notifications to devices. In practice, even if there is a push token associated with a device, some users may not see push notifications in case they disabled alerts manually from their device settings. Push Enabled devices are reachable with Background (Silent) pushes, In-App Messages, and can receive notifications to the Inbox.  
3. Push Alerts Enabled devices can display push notification alerts outside the app: on the lockscreen, in the notification center, or as a badge on the app icon. 

How to use Push Alerts Enabled tag? 

Push Alerts Enabled tag tracks how many users can actually receive push notification alerts when they have the app in the background or closed.

Devices with alerts enabled are marked with “True”, while the rest are marked with “False” value. You can check this in your Tags’ statistics. 

Comparing Push Enabled and Push Alerts Enabled devices gives you a better picture on your opt-in rates and can help choosing the right communication channel to engage with the wider audience. Building a segment of devices with disabled alerts allows you to reach them via alternative channels and motivate them to re-enable the notifications.

How to make this work? 

Push Alerts Enabled tag is a default one and is collected automatically. Latest versions of Pushwoosh SDK (released Fall 2018 or later) are required to take advantage of this functionality. 

Important! The alerts status can only be updated in Pushwoosh if the user opened the app at least once after changing the notification preferences in device settings.In case the user allows push notification alerts but doesn’t open the app, we won’t recognize such user as a Push Alerts Enabled one; that’s why it’s so important that you target all devices with tokens to ensure maximum reach. 

To learn more about Total Devices and Push Enabled devices, please refer to the Device Lifecycle in Pushwoosh article.