Provisioning an Application for Apple Push Notification Service

Use Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) to push notifications from SAP Mobile Server to the iOS application. Notifications might include badges, sounds, or custom text alerts. Device users can use Settings to customize which notifications to receive or ignore.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have a P12 certificate generated using the developer certificate (for code signing and deployment on to the device), and the private key of the certificate on your local machine.

Task
Each application that supports Apple Push Notifications must be listed in SAP Control Center with its certificate and application name. You must perform this task for each application.
  1. Confirm that the IT department has opened ports 2195 and 2196, by executing:
    telnet gateway.push.apple.com 2195
    telnet feedback.push.apple.com 2196
    If the ports are open, you can connect to the Apple push gateway and receive feedback from it.
  2. Upload the APNS certificate to SAP Control Center:
    1. In the navigation pane, click Applications.
    2. In the administration pane, click the Applications tab.
    3. Select the application for which you want to enable APNS, and click Properties.
    4. Click the Push Configurations tab and click on Add.
    5. Configure all required properties, including the corresponding password and upload the certificate. See APNS Native Notification Properties in SAP Control Center for SAP Mobile Platform online help.
  3. Deploy the iOS application with an enterprise distribution provisioning profile to users' iOS devices.
  4. Instruct users to use iTunes to install the application and profile, and how to enable notifications. In particular, device users must:
    • Download the application from the App Store.
    • In the iPhone Settings app, slide the Notifications control to On.
  5. Verify that the APNS-enabled iOS device is set up correctly:
    1. In SAP Control Center, ensure the user has already activated the application and is connected to the SAP Mobile Server, by looking for the corresponding entry in  ApplicationsApplication Connections.
    2.  Validate that in the Application Connection ID, the application name appears correctly at the end of the string.
    3. Select the user and click Properties.
    4. Check that the APNS Device Token contains a value. This indicates that a token has passed successfully following a successful application activation
  6. Test the environment by initiating an action that results in a new message being sent to the client.
    If you have verified that both device and server can establish a connection to APNS gateway, the device will receive notifications and messages from the SAP Mobile Server, including workflow messages, and any other messages that are meant to be delivered to that device. Allow a few minutes for the delivery or notification mechanism to take effect and monitor the data in the Pending Items column in the Application Users area to see that the value increases appropriately for the applications.
  7. To troubleshoot APNS, use the SMP_HOME\Servers\SAP Mobile Server\logs\server log file.
Parent topic: Deploying Applications to Devices
Previous topic: Configuring Apple Push Notification Service
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