In addition to sending email and SMS notifications, an instance can send push notifications to mobile devices.

A push notification is a text message that appears on a user's mobile device to alert them about something important or to ask them to perform an action. Your instance supports push notifications.

Figure 1. An example push notification
A ServiceNow push notification

Use push notifications to send messages to users when certain conditions are triggered on your instance, such as the assignment of an incident to the user. A push notification can even ask for a reply, and the instance can process the reply by acting on the related records. For example, you can have the instance send an approval request for a Change to a user. You can let the user approve or deny the Change by clicking a response button on the push notification. The user's response can then update the status of the Change record.

You can set up push notifications in a similar manner to email and SMS notifications. Determine:
  • who to send the notification to
  • when it should be sent
  • what it should contain
The ServiceNow mobile app is available as ServiceNow Classic and as Mobile Agent. By default, ServiceNow Classic supports push notifications, but you can also develop your own push application and configure your instance to send push notifications to it. For more information on setting up push notifications in Mobile Agent, go to Mobile push notifications.

Push notification setup

Push notification setup differs depending on the mobile or push application that you want your users to use. For an overview, see: Push notification setup with a custom push application for ServiceNow mobile apps. If you create your own application, you must understand how push notifications and the Apple Push Notification Service system work. For more information, see the APNs Overview in theLocal and Remote Notification Programming Guide for Apple developers.

Important: Apple does not guarantee delivery of all push notifications. Review the Quality of Service (QoS) information in the Local and Remote Notification Programming Guide for Apple developers.