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We are implementing a backend service that gets device registration tokens from a backend system. The device registration tokens are obtained by the mobile device from the platform PNS.

The tokens are stored with the user profile in the backend, we use that data to poll/stream from the backend through our integration service. (fyi, we are sending out scheduled push notifications that user can set up in an app).

We only plan to send out push notifications to individual users.

An individual user can have multiple devices on different platforms (iOS/Android at the moment).

For simplicity we now are looking at Direct Send.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/notificationhubs/direct-send

We get the device registration token(s) per user and send out a push. We iterate over the devices as we keep device registration token along with the platform type. Based on platform type we send out the correct format, headers, etc. This means we would have the tokens we need to send out push notifications.

Would there be any concerns in using this approach? This way we would skip the installation (or registration) part completely. If we would like to send out push out notifications to all users and devices and some point in the future, direct send won't help us, but in that scenario we might look at batch send.

The other solution would be using installations with tags, and create a tag per user. But if a user would have an iOS device and an Android device, we would still need to split that out.

So i'd like to know are there any drawbacks on direct send or things i overlook here?

JoostD
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1 Answers1

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This approach is very much accepted by the engineering team for Notification Hubs. As you mention, the only downside is not being able to take advantage of some broadcast features when Notification Hubs is managing registrations or installations.

MarStr
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  • Good to hear from an expert from the team itself! should i worry about the note mentioned? "We continue to support Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) as long as Google supports it via their Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) legacy API. This API doesn't support Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) yet." In other words, is Direct Send future proof and will it overtime use the FCM underneath without breaking towards clients? – JoostD Jan 08 '20 at 19:08