Does Flow Push Notifications require registration with Google Cloud Messaging or APNS services?

[JC]

Hi

I am experimenting with Flow templates - e.g. receive a push notification when your boss emails you....

Normally push notifications use the OS push capabilities of the mobile device vendor (e.g. APNS or GCM/FCM) which requires the user to "register" an app for push notifications ....but this does not seem to be the case for the O365 Flow app....How is the push achieved? Is it the case that the Flow app on the mobile device is polling regularly?

Thanks for your help

JC

[v-micsh-msft]

Hi @JC,

There is no need for Microsoft Flow to register with Google Could Messaging or APNS, the push notification is sent to the Flow Mobile App.

Microsoft Flow is a SaaS service, once the trigger is fired, the Push Notification would then be triggered within the flow service, which would start the notification sending.

Please check the document below for more information regarding notifications and Mobile App:

Using the Mobile App

Getting notifications

And if you have any further questions, please post back.

Regards,

Michael Shao

[JC]

Thanks Michael for your response - I am still missing sesting something in my understanding. From my testing here, notifications can be sent to my phone (from the FLOW SaaS cloud service) even when the FLOW app is closed on my phone. Typically, this behaviour is acheived via the native push notification features of the mobile phone provider (i.e. Google Cloud Messaging for Android, and Apple Push Notification Services  for iOS)......

So this behaviour makes me think that the FLOW native app does indeed auto-register with the relevant Mobile OS vendor push service?

The alternative would be that the FLOW native app is continuously polling for notifications from the O365 system, and that it uses a background scheduled job to do this even when the app itself is closed on the mobile phone.

Do you see my confusion?

Many thanks

JC