Sending SMS push notifications

In addition to standard push notifications, we can also send Short Message Service (SMS) messages, more commonly known as text messages, to user devices. To receive SMS notifications, users must first subscribe to a push notification event source.

The SMS notification framework extends the push notification framework. SMS support is provided for Apple, Google, and Windows Phone 8 devices, and for BlackBerry devices that support SMS functions. MPF includes the capability to send SMS notifications to all platforms that provide SMS support.

1. An SMS notification infrastructure is set up.

   A MobileFirst adapter acts as a connector to an app running on a mobile device.

2. User of the mobile device sends a subscribe request from the application to the event source that is declared in the MobileFirst adapter, using the client-side WL.Client.Push.subscribeSMS method.

3. User subscription to the event source is registered at the MobileFirst Server.

4. When the back-end service must notify the user, it calls a method in the MobileFirst adapter.

5. The adapter checks whether an SMS subscription exists for that user and, if it does, sends the SMS alert message through a preconfigured SMS aggregator.

6. Optional: If SMS notifications are no longer necessary, we can unsubscribe.

   The subscription is deleted either by an application that calls the WL.Client.Push.unsubscribeSMS method, or using the Admin console. See Administer push notifications with the operations console.

   For a detailed scenario-based example that shows SMS messaging, see the developerWorks article Send SMS push notifications to the mobile app using MPF.

Parent topic: Push notification