Push and local notifications are a key factor that makes the experience better for consumers — they never have to stay in your app or keep the window open as they will get a proactive notification as soon as a reply or notice is available.

For push notifications to work, you must have a physical device and two .pem files for Conversational Cloud. Here, you will set up push notifications in your Xcode project, create your app certificate and key files, and create the required .pem files to implement push notifications.

Prerequisites

Followed the Quick Start Guide for iOS and you are now ready to implement and enable features.

Step 1: Set up push notifications in your project

  1. In your Xcode project, under Capabilities, flip the toggle on for the following:

    • Push: Notifies the user when a new message from the remote user is received.

    • Maps: Shows the location on the map.

    • Background Modes + Remote notifications: Minimizes the amount of time that elapses between when a user sees a push notification and when your app is able to display the content.

  2. Pass the user info of a remote push notification to the SDK:

    public func handlePush(userInfo: [NSObject : AnyObject])

  3. Register the device token on LPMesssagingSDK instance:

    func registerPushNotifications(token: Data, notificationDelegate: LPMessagingSDKNotificationDelegate? = nil, alternateBundleID: String? = nil, authenticationParams: LPAuthenticationParams? = nil)

    The SDK receives the device token from the registerPushNotifications but the actual registration occurs only after calling showConversation.

  4. Add custom behavior if LivePerson Push Notification was touched:

    <LPMessagingSDKNotificationDelegate> optional func LPMessagingSDKNotification(didReceivePushNotification notification: LPNotification)

  5. Hide or show the In-App Push Notification:

    <LPMessagingSDKNotificationDelegate> optional func LPMessagingSDKNotification(shouldShowPushNotification notification: LPNotification) -> Bool

  6. Override LPMessagingSDK — In-App Push Notification:

    <LPMessagingSDKNotificationDelegate> optional func LPMessagingSDKNotification(customLocalPushNotificationView notification: LPNotification) -> UIView

  7. Add custom tap behavior to LPMessagingSDK — In-App Notification:

    <LPMessagingSDKNotificationDelegate> optional func LPMessagingSDKNotification(notificationTapped notification: LPNotification)

    When using LPMessagingSDKNotification(customLocalPushNotificationView notification: LPNotification) -> UIView to customize the In App Notification, the following delegate LPMessagingSDKNotification(notificationTapped notification: LPNotification) won't be trigger as the behavior for the new InApp Notification should be implemented by the Host App.

    The proprietary SDK notification is only for display purposes, interacting with it launches the app, but does not navigate to the Conversation Window/ViewController, for a fully interactive notification host app needs to provide the implementation.

Step 2: Create a Certificate Signing Request

In this step, you create a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) file that contains a public/private key pair. With this file, you create a key file with a password and a certificate file using a pem format.

  1. In the Applications folder, launch Keychain Access.

  2. From the Keychain Access menu, select Certificate Assistant → Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.

  3. Enter the required information:

    • User Email Address

    • Common Name (a name for your private key, for example, John Doe Dev Key)

    • CA Email Address

  4. Select the Saved to disk option for the Request is and then click Continue.

  5. Click Save.

Step 3: Create the SSL certificate

  1. Go to your Apple Developer Portal, under Push Notification, select Apple Push Notifications service SSL Certificates and then click Create Certificate for either Development or Production.

  2. Under Upload CSR file, click Choose File, select the CSR file you created earlier, and then click Generate.

  3. Click Download to download the apps_development.cer file and then click Done.

    You use this apps_development.cer file to create the dev-cert.pem file.

Step 4. Create the certificate and key .pem files

  1. Locate the downloaded apps_development.cer file and double-click it to install it in Keychain Access.

  2. In Keychain Access, right-click on your new push certificate and select Export.

  3. Save the certificate as Certificates.p12.

  4. If prompted, enter a password.

  5. Open a terminal and navigate to the folder where you saved the apps_developement.cer file and convert it to dev-cert.pem:

     openssl x509 -in aps_development.cer -inform der -out dev-cert.pem

  6. Convert the private keys .p12 file to keyWithPassword.pem:

     cp Certificates.p12 key.p12
 openssl pkcs12 -nocerts -out keyWithPassword.pem -in key.p12

  7. Enter a passphrase for the keyWithPassword.pem file, which you use for the RSA hostkey.pem key.

  8. Create the RSA hostkey.pem key and enter the passphrase created in the previous step.

     openssl rsa -in keyWithPassword.pem -out hostkey.pem

Step 5. Configure push notifications in Conversational Cloud

In this step, you add the dev-cert.pem and hostkey.pem to Conversational Cloud.

  1. Log into your Conversational Cloud account.

  2. In Conversational Cloud, click the Campaign Builder tab, and then Data Sources.

    Data Sources

  3. On the Integrations tab, under Mobile app management, click Manage.

  4. Click Add new to add your app to the mobile campaign.

  5. Select your platform as iOS, enter your app’s name, and then click Create app.

  6. Upload your app certificate and key file in the appropriate locations.

    • Certificate file: dev-cert.pem

    • Key file: hostkey.pem

    If you are using a development certificate, you should uncheck the Production checkbox and add "-Dev" postfix to the Mobile app name. For example, if your app Bundle ID is AppId, your mobile app name should be "AppId-Dev". If you are using a production certificate, you should leave the production checkbox checked and insert to the Mobile App name your App Bundle ID as it is.

    Tip: You have a 155 character limit for your Bundle ID.

  7. Click Close.

Unregister from push notifications

This method should be called before calling "logout" on the SDK.

LPMessaging.instance.unregisterPusher(brandId: "ACCOUNT_NUM", completion: {

}) { error in

}