Open channels

About Open channels

An open channel is essentially any internet-connected medium that can accept and interpret a JSON payload.

The simplest use case for a notification is the one we are all familiar with: displaying the text of an alert. But there are many other uses for a notification payload, which, depending on the target interface or OS, may be handled in different ways. For example, our SDKs for iOS and Android support the interactive features of those operating systems through our API. Our API also supports an extra field, which lets you to pass any key/value pair to handle how you see fit, e.g., update a config file or trigger a different process.

An open channel can be any non-native platform or interface where you’d like to reach users, or for that matter any client capable of receiving a payload over the Internet. The end message doesn’t need to be human-readable alert text as you might see on an iPhone. Alerts are usually intended for people, but in the case of a machine, you could tell it to update its firmware, increment a counter in a database, or perform some other action. Use cases include:

• Automated Slack Message using Slack incoming webhooks
• Chatbot notifications
• Firmware updates for IOT devices
• Integrate with third-party messaging APIs, e.g., Twitter

While open channels require some development work on your end, integrating your open channel with Airship extends most of the features of our platform to additional channels, providing you with an additional way to communicate with your audience.

Appearance and behavior

Open channels are not backed by an Airship SDK, so the developer must determine how to parse and display the notification payloads in the available interface. Every push notification requires text, and you can also add optional features:

• Title — A heading that appears above the notification text where applicable.
• Media — See: Media guidelines.
• Summary — Supplemental text displayed with the primary notification.

Getting started with Open channels

Follow these steps to start using Open channels with Airship:

• Configure a webhook for your project that accepts open delivery payloads, translates them, and routes notifications to your app or open channel device.
• Register users using the Open channels API.

For both, see Getting Started for Open channels integration in our developer documentation.

Once your project is set up, you can start creating Open channels content.