Push Notifications

A push notification is a message that lands on the phone of someone who already follows you in the Sway mobile app. It is not an email and it is not a post on your page: it interrupts, it is short, and tapping it opens your page or your event inside the app.

The screen exists on four page types

Notifications is in the sidebar of an event, an artist, a venue and a promoter, under the Marketing heading. There is no such screen on a crew, and nothing sends a push from crew level: a crew manages the pages, the pages send the notifications.

The subtitle tells you which audience the screen is pointed at:

Open the notifications screen

1. Open Manage and click the page or the event you want to send from.
2. Click Notifications in the left sidebar.

The composer is headed Send a Push Notification, with a live phone preview beside it and a Recent Notifications list below.

If you land on a plan comparison instead of the composer, this page has no sending allowance. On an artist, a venue or a promoter that is the free plan, and the header carries an Upgrade button. On an event it is subtler: an event does not need a plan of its own, it draws on the allowance of the promoter behind it, so an event goes silent when that promoter has none.

Who receives a push

On an artist, a venue or a promoter it goes to the followers of that page. There is nothing to choose.

On an event you pick between two audiences, and the screen counts both for you before you commit:

• Event + promoter followers sends to the people marked interested or going, plus everyone who follows the event's promoter. The hint reads Interested/going users plus everyone who follows this event's promoter.
• Event audience only narrows it to the event itself: Only users interested or going to this event.

The two lists are merged and de-duplicated, so somebody who follows the promoter and marked themselves going is counted and messaged once. On an event with no promoter linked to it, both options come to the same thing.

The count on the card is not the count that gets delivered

The Recipients figure at the top of the screen is the size of the audience. Every recipient can switch this category of notification off in the mobile app, and those people are dropped at send time, not before. The figure recorded against the push afterwards in Recent Notifications is the one that counts: it is what was actually created, after the opt-outs came out.

Expect the second number to be smaller than the first. A gap between them is people exercising a setting they are entitled to, not a fault.

Compose and send

1. On an event only, choose your audience: Event + promoter followers or Event audience only.
2. Type a Title. It is capped at 50 characters, with a counter above the box, and it is the bold first line on the phone.
3. Type the Message. It is capped so that the whole notification fits 150 characters, and the counter above it shows the finished length rather than what you typed.
4. Paste an Image URL (optional) if you want a thumbnail. It must be a normal http or https web address. A picture that will not load says Could not load image under the field and is left out of the preview.
5. Under Send mode, keep Schedule for later, or switch to Send immediately. Choosing the second raises a notice: The notification will be sent right away to all recipients.
6. If you are scheduling, set the Date and the Time. A line underneath echoes the moment back to you, prefixed Your local time, followed by the timezone your browser is in.
7. Click Schedule, or Send now in immediate mode. Reset clears the form without sending.

Your page name is added to the message for you. The phone shows Your page name: your message, and the hint under the box, Prefixed by, names the page it will use. That is why the character counter runs ahead of what you typed, and why the room left in the box shrinks as the page name grows. A long name is shortened before it goes in front.

The preview beside the form is the real thing, rebuilt on every keystroke: same title, same prefixed message, same thumbnail. Read it before you send. It is the only place you see what the message actually looks like once the prefix is applied.

Reuse a news post

If the page published a post in the last three days, a picker appears above the title, labelled Prefill from a recent news.

1. Open the picker and choose the post. It starts on Choose a news…
2. The title, the message and the image fill themselves in. A short Prefilled from news confirmation appears.
3. Edit what you need. The post's formatting is stripped to plain text and the text is trimmed to fit, so the result is usually worth a reread.
4. Send or schedule as usual.

The hint states the rule: Published in the last 3 days. Fills the title, message (plain text) and image. Nothing older shows up, and if there is no recent published post the picker is not there at all.

You can also start from the other end. On a published post in News, the button Send a push jumps here with that post already selected.

Scheduling, and which clock it uses

The dates in Recent Notifications are printed the same French way, for the same reason.

Events stop accepting pushes two days after they end

An event is a finite thing, so its notification screen closes with it. Two days after the event ends, or two days after it starts when no end time was set, the composer greys out behind the message Notifications can no longer be sent for this event. The 2-day window after the event ended has expired.

The window exists so you can still say thank you the morning after. It is enforced on the server as well as on the screen, so there is no way around it from the interface. If your event dates are wrong, fix them in Event settings rather than fighting this screen.

The monthly allowance

Sending is metered per month, and the screen tracks it in two places: a card counting what you have used against what you are allowed, and a progress bar in the right-hand column showing the same thing with the remainder called out.

Once you run out, the top of the page carries You have reached your monthly notification limit. Your quota resets at the start of each month. and every control in the composer is disabled until the month turns over. How many you get depends on the plan behind the page, and an event draws on its promoter's allowance rather than holding one of its own.

Read and clean up the history

Recent Notifications lists the ten most recent, newest first, with Refresh to pull the list again and No notifications sent yet. when there is nothing. Each row shows the title, the message, the date, how many recipients it reached, the thumbnail if there was one, and one status badge:

Delete a scheduled push

1. Find the row and click the bin icon on its right. It is only there on Scheduled and Failed rows.
2. The dialog Delete scheduled notification? confirms what goes: This action will delete the scheduled notification and any unsent copies: followed by the title.
3. Click Delete, or Cancel to back out.

A confirmation, Notification deleted successfully., replaces the row. A push that already went out has no bin icon, and asking for one anyway answers Only scheduled notifications can be deleted.

Who is allowed to send

The check is repeated on the server, so a missing Send push stops the send itself and not only the button.

Where this fits

On an artist, a venue or a promoter, opening this screen also ticks the Send Notifications step of the guided setup described in The guided setup.