Seeking clarification about broadcast notifications for Public and White-Label apps

[Marc_Dillon]

I seek some clarification for exactly how Broadcast Notifications work with Public “Publisher Pro” plan apps.

This page says:

Notifications will be sent to all users who have installed the native AppSheet app on their device and have opened your app.

help.appsheet.com

Broadcast Notifications to Your Users

Send a push notification to your app's users.

I’ve tried to send a broadcast notification on a Public app previously, but I was told that none of the user received it. However with this particular app the users list is completely blank except for myself as the editor (I did receive the broadcast), all the users access the app via install links or in the browser instead of being invited.

I’m not sure if I have any other options for testing this, at least not ones that won’t confuse or annoy active users. Does anyone have any clarification for me?

Also, would white-labeling an app affect the broadcast notifications at all?

[Marc_Dillon]

Maybe I need to ask support about this one?

[Steve]

Yep. I have no experience here, so I have nothing to offer.

[Marc_Dillon]

Support has clarified that with Public apps, broadcast notifications will ONLY go to any users that have been added to the whitelist.

And white-labelling should have no effect on broadcast notifications.

[LeventK]

Isn’t his explanation a dilemma @Marc_Dillon? By nature, public apps do not need a user whitelist at all as sign-in is not required. For any app which uses an ‘open’ user pole where we don’t ‘detect’ the user identity, how could it work as explained?? Completely meaningless I believe.

[GreenFlux]

It does sound a little weird. Public apps will break if you use USEREMAIL() in an expression anywhere in the app.

[LeventK]

@GreenFlux
Actually the support had declared that you can’t use broadcast notifications with publisher pro accounts and public apps, you need to have secure apps

[Marc_Dillon]

To clarify, I’m talking about Broadcast Notifications :

There is no entering of USEREMAIL() anywhere, this is not a Push Notification Workflow.

Since you all seem interested, I’ll describe the support ticket conversation a bit.

There was some back and forth with this support ticket, thus the 21 day gap in this thread. It was initially stated that Broadcast Notifications would only work for PREMIUM, PRO, or Business plans. That was not the exact wording, and I thought the exact wording was a bit odd, so I asked a follow-up question for clarity; “Do Broadcast Notifications NOT work for Publisher_Pro plans?”

To which the replies were:
“Yes it will work”
…
Couple minutes later:
“No sorry ignore the above it won’t work as the system doesn’t know the user’s email addresses”

So I thought, well you can still add users to the user whitelist, even on public apps, right? And if you do that, then there are their email addresses. Maybe this is the list that the system uses to send out Broadcast Notifications. I don’t have much capacity to test all this out, otherwise I would have by now, but I DO know that I myself received one of the Broadcast Notifications that I sent in a Deployed Public app, with myself added to the user whitelist as an editor.

Support confirmed this to be the case. Yes you can add user to public app whitelist, and yes broadcasts go out to all those on the whitelist.

Take it as you will.

LeventK:

Actually the support had declared that you can’t use broadcast notifications with publisher pro accounts and public apps, you need to have secure apps

You sent in a ticket about this as well?