Configure push notifications for application updates

Configure the Application Center services to communicate with Google or Apple push notification servers.

Purpose

We must configure the credentials or certificates of the Application Center services to be able to communicate with third-party push notification servers.

Configure the server scheduler of the Application Center

The server scheduler is a background service that automatically starts and stops with the server. This scheduler is used to empty at regular intervals a stack that is automatically filled by administrator actions with push update messages to be sent. The default interval between sending two batches of push update messages is twelve hours. If this default value does not suit you, we can modify it using the server environment variables ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.amount and ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.unit.

The value of ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.amount is an integer. The value of ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.unit can be seconds, minutes, or hours. If the unit is not specified, the amount is an interval that is expressed in hours. These variables are used to define the elapsed time between two batches of push messages.

Use JNDI properties to define these variables.

Important: In production, you should avoid setting the unit to seconds. The shorter the elapsed time, the higher the load on the server; the unit expressed in seconds is only implemented for testing and evaluation purposes. For example, when the elapsed time is set to 10 seconds, push messages are sent almost immediately.

See List of JNDI properties for the Application Center for a complete list of properties we can set.

Example for Apache Tomcat server

Define these variables with JNDI properties in the server.xml file:

<Environment name="ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.unit" override="false" type="java.lang.String" value="hours"/>
<Environment name="ibm.appcenter.push.schedule.period.amount" override="false" type="java.lang.String" value="2"/>

For information about how to configure JNDI variables for WAS v8.5, see Use resource environment providers in WebSphere Application Server.

For information about how to configure JNDI variables for WAS Liberty profile, see Use JNDI binding for constants from the server configuration files.

The remaining actions for setting up the push notification service depend on the vendor of the device where the target application is installed. See the following topics.

Parent topic: Push notifications of application updates