The push notification system involves several key elements that manage the delivery of
push messages, push notification responses, and push feedback.
Customer instance
Your ServiceNow instance.
Push proxy
An instance that collects all push notifications that go to the ServiceNow Classic mobile
application and forwards them to the ServiceNow applications for Apple
iOS or Android. If you create a custom push application, you do not use the push
proxy.
Push provider
The provider of push messages, which is the Apple Push Notification service (APNs)
or Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) service, for the ServiceNow Classic mobile app or
custom mobile apps.
Feedback provider
The provider of feedback messages, which tells the instance what devices are no
longer valid. The Apple feedback or FCM server handles feedback messages for the ServiceNow Classic mobile app on iOS
and Android devices respectively.
Feedback proxy
The ServiceNow instance that
handles feedback messages from the Apple feedback server.
Push application on a mobile device
The application, such as the ServiceNow Classic mobile
application. You can also build and customize your own push application.
Push notification process
The push notification process is as follows:
Activity on the instance triggers a push notification.
The instance looks for who to send the notification to and checks the user
notification preferences to find their push device settings.
The instance sends the push notification to the push notification service, either the
Apple Push Notification service (APNs) or Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) service. If you
are using the ServiceNow Classic
mobile app, the instance sends the notification through a push proxy instance, which
then forwards the notification to the APNs or FCM service.
The push notification service sends the notification to the user's push application.
When the instance sends the notification to the push notification service, it includes
message content along with the instance name and ID. This information ensures that a response
to the notification is sent back to the correct instance. If the user can reply to the
notification, such as sending an approval to a change request, the response is sent via
REST message back to the instance.
The instance identifies a script to run to handle the response.
The script performs an action on the instance, such as marking a change request
approved. If there is invalid JSON or if the script fails, an error response is sent
back to the device.
The following diagram shows the elements of the push notification system with the ServiceNow Classic mobile application.
Within the ServiceNow infrastructure
is your instance, the optional push proxy instance, and the ServiceNow feedback proxy. External to
ServiceNow are the messaging
services (APNs or FCM) and user mobile devices, which include the application that is
registered to receive push notifications. See Push feedback for an explanation of
the feedback service.
Figure 1. Push notification system with the ServiceNow Classic mobile appPush notification responses
With custom push applications, you can have your users act on records in the instance by
responding to a push notification.
The actions that they can take are defined in a script that you associate with the
notification message. The response is sent to the instance in this format:
https://{instance_name}/api/now/v1/push/{application Name}/action/{action} The
application name is the push application the user is using. The application name must match
the application name in the Push Application [sys_push_application] table. The action is the
Sys ID of the action in the Push Notifications Actions [sys_push_notif_act_script]
table.
Push feedback
Feedback refers to the information about failed iOS message delivery and the iOS push
applications that can no longer receive push notifications.
The instance uses a scheduled job to pull feedback data every hour from the APNs. When the
APNs determines that a device can no longer receive push messages, the corresponding device
is set to inactive, making it unable to receive push notification messages. The Push
Feedback [sys_push_feedback] table shows the token for the device that failed. If the same
device is again able to receive push notifications, the device might receive the same token
from the APNs. A new record is inserted into the Push Notification Installation
[sys_push_notif_app_install] table.
