Push notifications work sometimes and other times (when its crucal) they dont

Troubleshooting Mobile Apps
1

I have been plagued with issues related to notifications on my android phone since the beginning of using this application. I have reinstalled many times, upgrade the software as soon as an update is released. I will have messages sent directly to me and no notification on my phone. This is affecting my availability to my techs because they are messaging me and because I don’t get the notification they think I am busy or not able to assist them. I have resorted to just telling them to call me or text me rather than use the program we should be using for business communication.

I have adjusted the android Battery Optimization to “Not Optimized” and no change.

I have a pixel 4XL but this also happened on my pixel 2XL.

To add to this it seems like if I am active on my phone and periodically using mattermost then I do get the notifications but if I am not like after work they just don’t come in no matter how many times someone messages me or tags me.

2

What Mattermost server version and mobile app version are you on? Is this only on Android and have others at your company seen this issue?

3

Mattermost version 5.22.0 but its been happening since 4.12 i believe.
The current mobile app I have installed is 1.33.1

Others do have the same issue. Doesnt matter if its iPhone or Android and not even hardware specific. We have seen this on samsung and google phones.

4

Hello, @iofractal

While there can be multiple factor that causes push notification to not work, allow me to ask a couple of questions and gather more information from you.

Troubleshooting Questions

  • May I know if you have potentially sign in to multiple sessions at one time (desktop + web + mobile)?

  • Are you getting in-app notifications as per normal?

  • Did you configure push notifications to be sent for all activity and status?

  • You mentioned that it works sometimes. Under what circumstances does it work and when it does not? Specific time of the day / specific channels or direct messages?

Troubleshooting Steps

Before we start digging deeper into the issue, let us go through the basic steps of testing push notifications on your mobile device in the following documentation:

Should it continue to fail after the test, I would recommend you to proceed to the Troubleshooting Push Notifications page and perform the steps listed to further troubleshoot the issue.

If that does not help, please log in to the desktop / web app, navigate to Account Settings > Security > View and Log Out of Active Sessions, and click Log Out for every session that you have. Once done, test the notification again.

Moving Forward

If it still fails after that and you have access as a System Administrator, please provide me with the screen shot of the System Console > Notifications > Mobile Push on your end including the snippet of the mattermost.log from the when you reproduce the issue so I can look into this matter further.

If you are just the end user, please provide me with the screen shots of the notification settings on your OS level as well as the notification settings from the Mattermost app itself via Settings > Notifications > Mobile.

5

Here are the responses.

Troubleshooting Questions

May I know if you have potentially sign in to multiple sessions at one time (desktop + web + mobile)?

Yes, desktop is always logged in on my laptop.

Are you getting in-app notifications as per normal?

Kinda, while in the app the notifications do work. For my test I had one user message me and for 6 messages it notified me. He then messaged me a min later and no notification for that message.

Did you configure push notifications to be sent for all activity and status?

No, only for mentions and direct notifications with the trigger push settings to online, away or offline

You mentioned that it works sometimes. Under what circumstances does it work and when it does not? Specific time of the day / specific channels or direct messages?

It seems like when I am less active on my phone is when I no longer get notifications.

Testing Push Notifications

Should it continue to fail after the test, I would recommend you to proceed to the Troubleshooting Push Notifications page and perform the steps listed to further troubleshoot the issue.

Test Notifications work every time.

If that does not help, please log in to the desktop / web app, navigate to Account Settings > Security > View and Log Out of Active Sessions, and click Log Out for every session that you have. Once done, test the notification again.

Should I still do this since the test notifications are working?

We are in the process of pulling the logs from the server now.

Thank you for your help!

6

The tech collecting the logs says there is no message ID in the notifications log for the message and he has stated there appears to be a gap around the time as well.

7

There were no logs present for that message. How should we proceed? @

8

Hi, @iofractal

Sorry for the radio silence as I missed out the notification on this one. Anyway, I’d like you to log out from the rest of the session(s) that you have and let the mobile app running in the background.

Ensure that the Settings > Notification > Mobile is set to this:

IMG_9714
IMG_97141125×2436 87.3 KB

Once done, ask your colleague to send 3 types of messages (with a gap of 1-2 minutes so that the notifications don’t overlap):

  • 1 message in the public channel that you are a participant of
  • 1 message in the private channel that you are a participant of
  • 1 direct message

Ensure that the channel(s) are not muted as well.

IMG_9715.PNG
IMG_9715.PNG1125×2274 207 KB

Additionally, ensure that your mobile session is active from the Sessions table.

SELECT u.Username, s.Props FROM Sessions AS s LEFT JOIN Users AS u ON s.UserId = u.Id WHERE s.Props LIKE "%IOS%" AND Username = "<USERNAME>";

Let me know how it goes.

9

Yeah, this worked but I wouldn’t have expected it to not. Most of the time the notifications work. I cant keep “for all activity” enabled or my phone would be going off non-stop so I switched it back to “Only for mentions and direct messages”.

10

Hello, @iofractal

Thanks for the confirmation. Since the push notification does work for that scenario, the issue that you are facing is most likely related to the status that you are on.

Try to set your Trigger Push Notifications when to Away / offline to further test this. Verify the status of your mobile session from the database before performing the test.

11

In my testing this scenario works also.

12

Hello, @iofractal

Got it. In this case, we need to pin down under what circumstances / scenarios in which you don’t receive the notifications and grab the mattermost.log snippet when that happens so we can understand what is happening in the backend. Thanks.

13

My settings are to notify for mentions and direct messages and to push when online, away or offline. I am signed in on my laptop with the mattermost windows application and have the mobile app on my phone. When I have not been in mattermost on either device for likely 12 hours I didnt get a notification. We checked the logs and there was no log for the message. Its basically like it never happened. The message did exist though. How would you like me to proceed?

14

Thanks for the information sharing
vmware

2 Likes
16

Hello,

If it can help, we also got stability problems with push notifications on mobile devices, using Mattermost Server Team Edition v9.3.0.

After a lot of testing we were able to understand what follows :

Configuration :

  • Phone is iPhone 8 with Mattermost Client v2.11.0, push notifications enabled for all messages, when online, away or offline. OS allows notifications, sound is on.
  • Computer has Mattermost Client v5.6.0 app running.
  • Another user sends me messages on a private conversation A (1 to 1).
  • We consider the push notification is working if it shows a message on the screen with a sound.

Those tests are OK :
If I am out of conversation A on computer and phone app is closed, I receive notifications on phone and computer.
If I display conversation A on any device, I don’t receive notifications on any device.

This causes us trouble :
However, if on the phone I use the upper-left arrow to get out of the conversation, I don’t receive notifications on phone or computer, even if I left the app in background, or if I lock the phone.
it seems to works as if I still was displaying the conversation.

image

Two ways we found to avoid this is to select another conversation on the mobile app, or to kill the app in the background. Doing this, we systematically had the notifications.

We will explain this to the users, but it is not very practical to do.

Would that be possible to fix this ?

Feel free to test if you have the same behavior.

Note that on one of our Android devices, there also is a back button on the system on bottom of screen, and if used, it behave differently, really gets out of conversation A and we have notifications. This is not possible on iPhone :
image

Regards,

17

Hi @marc.jolivet , thanks for your detailed description of the issue you’re experiencing and bringing it to our attention!

The team will be looking into this.

In the meantime, are you seeing other issues around notifications that you’re experiencing?