Build Your Own In-App Notification Feature

If you use the Salesforce mobile app, you’re familiar with the Salesforce Bell. The Bell provides an in-app notification tray that lists the current user’s most recent notifications. With Salesforce Notification APIs, you can design and build your own tray.

Queries calculate results from stored Notification Builder notifications. Salesforce provides REST APIs for the following Notification queries.

Notification: Get a specific notification for the context user.

Notifications: Get notifications for the context user.

Notifications Status: Get the “read” and “seen” properties a range of notifications.

Notification Update: Update the “read” and “seen” properties of a specific notification.

Notifications Update: Update the “read” and “seen” properties of a range of notifications.

For example, using these APIs, an app can

  • Display a list of notifications (Notifications)
  • When the customer taps a list entry, display the details of a single notification (Notification)
  • Set the state of a widget that indicates whether a notification has been read or seen (Notification)
  • Report how many notifications the customer hasn’t read or seen (Notifications Status)
  • Update the “read” or “seen” properties on one or more notifications after the customer visits your tray (Notification Update, Notifications Update)

If you’re looking for a head start in Swift, Mobile SDK provides an example of a custom notifications tray in the MobileSyncExplorerSwift template app. You can create your own app based on this template with the forceios createwithtemplate CLI command:

  1. Install the latest forceios version from node.js:

  2. Call the forceios createWithTemplate command:

  3. At the first prompt, enter MobileSyncExplorerSwift:

  4. In the remaining prompts, enter your company and project information. If your information is accepted, forceios creates a project with a notifications tray that you can customize.

  5. If you’re updating an older Mobile SDK project, copy your app-specific resources from your old project into the new project.

See the Reference section for more information on Notification APIs.

On iOS, Mobile SDK defines convenience methods for Notification APIs in the following classes:

Swift

Objective-C

The following methods are currently available for native apps only.

Get a notification.

Delegate Method

Swift

Objective-C

Block Method

Not available.

Get the status of a range of notifications, including unread and unseen count.

Delegate Method

Swift

Objective-C

Block Method

Not available.

Get the given number (maximum 20) of archived Notification Builder notifications based on the given “before” or “after” date. In Mobile SDK, use the Swift FetchNotificationsRequestBuilder object or the Objective-C SFSDKFetchNotificationsRequestBuilder to create GET requests for notifications.

Delegate Method

Swift

Objective-C

Block Method

Not available.

Update the “read” and “seen” statuses of a given set of Notification Builder notifications. In Mobile SDK, use the Swift UpdateNotificationsRequestBuilder object or the Objective-C SFSDKUpdateNotificationsRequestBuilder object to create update requests.

To update a single notification, set the notificationId property. To update a range of notifications, set either the notificationIds or the before property. These properties—notificationId, notificationIds, and before—are mutually exclusive.

Delegate Method

Swift

Objective-C

Block Method

Not available.

On Android, the RestRequest class defines the following convenience wrappers for Notification APIs.

Get a notification.

Update the “read” and “seen” statuses of a given Notification Builder notification.

Get the given number (maximum 20) of archived Notification Builder notifications based on the given “before” or “after” date.

Get the status of a range of notifications, including unread and unseen count.

Update the “read” and “seen” statuses of a given set of Notification Builder notifications.