Button Actions
Choose the action that occurs when a user taps a button in your In-App Automation, Scene, or Survey. This page details the different button actions, how to set them, and additional options.
Setting Button Actions
For In-App Automation, you add buttons in the composer’s Content step, and you set button actions in the Actions step. In Scenes and Surveys, you add buttons and set actions in the composer’s Content step.
For each button:
- Select a button action, and configure as required.
- (Optional) Set and/or remove TagsMetadata that you can associate with channels or named users for audience segmentation. Generally, they are descriptive terms indicating user preferences or other categorizations, e.g.,
wine_enthusiast
orweather_alerts_los_angeles
. Tags are case-sensitive. when the user taps a button. See: Set Tags. - (Optional) Opt a user in to or out of a Subscription ListAn audience list of users who are opted in to messaging about a specific topic. Users can manage their opt-in status per list using a preference center. when the user taps a button. See: Subscription List Opt In/Out.
- (Optional) Limit the message display to once if the user taps the message. Check the box to enable.
Tip Use this for repeated goal-related messages, e.g., prompt to opt-in. You would want to prevent re-display when the user accomplishes the goal.
After you configure all the buttons in your message, click to move on to the next step.
Actions
Supported actions and options per composer.
- Footer buttons are only available in In-App Automation and Scenes.
- Available actions for footer buttons: Adaptive Link, Deep Link, Web Page.
Trigger | In-App Automation | Scene | Survey |
---|---|---|---|
Adaptive Link | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
App Rating | ✓ | ✓ | |
App Settings | ✓ | ||
Deep Link | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Dismiss Message | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Location Opt-in | ✓ | ||
Next | ✓ | ||
Preference Center | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Previous | ✓ | ||
Push Opt-in | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Share | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Web Page | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Option: Set Tags | ✓ | ✓1 | ✓ |
Option: Subscription List Opt In/Out1 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
1. Not available for footer buttons.
Adaptive Link
Adaptive Link opens a mobile wallet pass. Select an Adaptive LinkA vendor-agnostic, shortened mobile wallet pass link that supports templates for both Google Wallet and Apple Wallet. When a user taps the link, Airship determines the user’s platform and generates the right pass for that platform. from the list.
- Adaptive links must be configured before they will appear in the actions list. See: in Create adaptive links using the dashboard.
- Only adaptive links created in the dashboard will appear in the actions list.
App Rating
App Rating prompts the user to rate the app in the app store. Optionally enter a custom message title and body.
App Rating display behavior differs by operating system and version:
- The Title and Body dialog appear for iOS 10 or below and Android only.
- iOS 11 will instead display its system dialog for app rating. Additionally, Apple limits app rating dialogs to three times in a 365-day period .
App rating prompts will process as configured by your message settings, but the displayed dialog is controlled by Apple, not Airship.
iOS requires that you provide your app’s Apple ID, which is used as the iTunes App Store Identifier. (Android and Amazon generate app store links automatically based on information already in your app, so no configuration is required.)
You can do this by adding the ID in your Airship project settings, or by editing your plist dictionary.
In your plist dictionary, add the following, substituting 1111111111
with the app’s actual ID:
<key>itunesID</key
<string>1111111111</string>
A quick way to find the Apple ID is to copy the numbers at the end of the app’s App Store URL. If the URL is https://apps.apple.com/app/id1195168544
, the Apple ID is 1195168544
.
Another way is to locate your app in iTunes Connect and copy the Apple ID.

App Settings
App Settings opens the device’s settings page for the app.
Deep Link
Deep Link opens a screen in your app or website. Select a deep link from the list.
- Deep links must be configured before they will appear in the actions list. See: Manage Deep Links.
- If you selected a deep link template, you can fill in each template segment.
The default action of a button is to dismiss the message, without any other effect. For example, a “Not Now” button allows a user to defer taking action and dismisses the message, which can be configured to reappear at a later time. An effective way to pair actions is to provide a “Not Now” button with the Dismiss Action, and an additional button with the Deep Link action, providing a direct link to your content.
Templates
Our Deep Link functionality supports URL templates, which expose a friendly interface to your users in our UI, while constructing the correct URL behind the scenes on the fly. You can specify substitution parameters by enclosing them in brackets. For example, if you want to define a Deep Link for a product page screen in your app (or on your mobile website), you can make the product ID number a substitution parameter. Here is an example URL:
https://yourcompany.com/products/{Product Id}
When you enter this URL in the Airship interface, the form parses it and previews the form your users see in the Message composer. It automatically identifies “Product Id” as the parameter name, and provides a field to substitute in the actual identifier. So if you had previously entered a product ID of 1872983490 for the above Product ID, the generated URL would be:
https://yourcompany.com/products/1872983490
The interface treats all values for each field as a string.
Dismiss Message
Dismiss Message closes the message.
Location Opt-in
Location Opt-in opens the system prompt for location opt-in.
Next
Next opens the next screen in a scene.
Preference Center
Preference Center opens an app preference center. Select a preference center from the list.
Previous
Previous opens the previous screen in a scene.
Push Opt-in
Push Opt-in opens the system prompt for push notification opt-in.
Share
Share prompts the user to share your message with apps, social media accounts, and other services. Enter the text you want to accompany the share, including any promotional information, shortened links, hashtags, etc.
Web Page
Web Page opens a web page or any valid-device level URL such as App Store or app protocol links. The web page opens in the device’s default browser. Enter a URL.
Button Options
You can set options after selecting button actions.
Set Tags
Set and/or remove a TagMetadata that you can associate with channels or named users for audience segmentation. Generally, they are descriptive terms indicating user preferences or other categorizations, e.g., wine_enthusiast
or weather_alerts_los_angeles
. Tags are case-sensitive. on the channel ID when a user taps a button.
After selecting a button action:
- Click Configure options.
- Select Add tag or Remove tag, then search for tags that exist in the system, or create a new tag.
Click Configure another option for additional tags.
Use tag-based targeting to prevent an in-app message from being seen or to chain the display of messages. E.g., set a tag “message1” on display of one message, and only display a second message to users who have the “message1” tag.
The ability to set tags based on user actions is key to promoting new features. The suggested approach is to display messages regarding a feature if the tag does not exist, and to then set the tag to record either the fact that the user has acknowledged the message, or to record actual usage of the feature. You can set a tag when a user clicks a button on an message, or even upon display, but recording actual feature usage requires some native code within the app. See:
Subscription List Opt In/Out
Opt a user in to or out of a Subscription ListAn audience list of users who are opted in to messaging about a specific topic. Users can manage their opt-in status per list using a preference center. when the user taps a button. Minimum SDKs required: iOS 16.9.0 and Android 16.7.0.
After selecting a button action:
- Click Configure options.
- Select Opt in to or Opt out of, then search for a subscription list by name. When you first click the search field, you can select from your five most recently modified subscription lists.
Click Configure another option for additional subscription lists.
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