[Mobile Push] Interactive Notifications on Android with IBM Mobile Customer Engagement (xtify)

By default, via an Android app you will receive simple and rich notification.

But, can we do better, user-friendly, more interactive notification with xtify? YES, Android provides us that capabilities with expandable notification, allowing you to display larger text, picture but also supports optional actions that are displayed at the bottom of the notification.

The idea is to engage the mobile user, customer as soon as he receives the notification.
For example for financial institution, to validate a wire transfer or validate an appointment directly from the notification.
xtify provides an easy way to do it via a optional JSON payload you can add to the message.

Here is just below some type of advanced customization you can image to do..

Wire Transfer Approval	Appointment Confirmation with calendar entry creation
Large Text	Large Image
Recall or SMS	ChatHead (Facebook Concept)

Example of JSON to add in the message in order to display these notifications

Each of these notifications has its own parameter. In my application the parameter "com.xtify.notification.STYLE" defines the style of notification to use, and I design the notification as I want. You can add the style you want to your application, like the ChatHead notification you can see.

Social Listening with Node-RED & IBM Silverpop

IBM Silverpop, Node-RED, Bluemix, System of Engagement, Social, Twitter, Mobile...

What is the link between all of these words/solutions/concepts?

Basically, systems of engagement refers to the transition from current enterprise systems designed around discrete pieces of information ("records") to systems which are more decentralized, incorporate technologies which encourage peer interactions, and which often leverage cloud technologies to provide the capabilities to enable those interactions.

Can I easily linked my Marketing Solution (in that case IBM Silverpop) with Social Channels like Twitter ans so being able to easily engage with my customer?

For example, during a product launch event, I would like to track all tweets (positive or negative) around a hashtag, and linked that tweets to my existing customer database. It is for a short period of time, I don't have an important budget, a long period of time to write specification and to develop it...

Or my Sales team would like to collect all Social interaction and correlate them with customer database.

I'm a big fan of the Node-RED technology, developed by IBM jStart work, available on IBM Bluemix. Node-RED is a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways, without "tough" development. I have designed a "prototype" in less than one day.

The use case is simple:

1. Track in real-time all tweets with hashtags #rabviptest & #viprabtest.
2. Do a sentiment analysis using AFINN, and retrieve a score on the tweet - Positive or negative tweet.
3. Send a mobile push notification to my two Social marketers on their mobile phone.
4. Store the twitter account name, numbers of followers and location of the twittos in one IBM Silverpop Profil table.
5. Store the twitter account name, numbers of followers and the sentiment of the tweet in one IBM Silverpop Relational table.

Option 4 illustrates the possibility to easily create a customer database based on Twitter interaction.

Option 5 illustrates the opportunity to store all twitter interaction and use that information for future retargeting with IBM Silverpop, and being able to capitalize on all Social interaction.

Node-RED provides interesting nodes, in my case, I use :

1) Twitter input node. It can be used to search either:

•     The public or a user's stream for tweets containing the configured search term
•     All tweets by specific users
•     Direct messages received by the authenticated use

2) Sentiment node to retrieve sentiment score of the tweet.

And, I have developed custom nodes:

1/ Mobile Push notification leveraging IBM xtify APIs

2/ Silverpop Node for:

   - Login,

   - Insert into relational database,

   - Contact creation in the Profile database.

 Node-RED Flow:

 

Example of tweets:

Negative tweet

Positive tweet

 

Notification on the mobile:

I receive in real-time a push notif with an info on the person who has tweeted and the sentiment linked to that tweet.

  

Silverpop Opt-In:

First approach: Simple opt-in
Two new contacts have been created after tweeting on the specified hastag. As you can see, they don't have email, but I can start to collect information on them.

 

Entries in a Relational Database:

Second approach: Capitalize social information on my existing customer database.

1/ My customer database:

2/ My Relational database:

I can know, for example, use these info for my customer segmentation or for advanced personalized content in email.

Example of query using that info:

In that prototype, I have captured the number of followers of my twitto, but I can easily imagine to retrieve the Klout of the  twitto via another custom node.

The idea is to be able to evaluate the influence and differentiate my communication based on that parameter.

That prototype has been imagined and co-designed with @rabenandrasana.

IBM Mobile Push Notification plugin for Google Chrome

I published this week an article illustrating the use of IBM Mobile Push Notification in Node-RED context (here). To do that, I leveraged its set of APIs. Open public APIs simplify cross-product integration to provide an end-to-end solution, but can also provide an easier, contextual solution:
Using a solution in the context of my work, a way to use a service without switching from one app to another.

I created a Google Chrome plugin allowing you to easily push notification of mobile app leveraging IBM Mobile Push SDK.

That plugin is downloadable on Google WebStore -> here
You have to enter the app Key, api Key and Xid as well as your message to do the notification.

Node-RED, IBM Mobile Push Notification (Xtify) & Bluemix

Today, I investigated Node-RED. Node-RED is a tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. It has been developed by IBM Emerging Technology.

Node-RED User Interface

Node-RED is available either on-premise or directly on IBM Bluemix. Node-RED provides by default several nodes like Social (twitter, IRC, XMPP...), Hardware (Raspberry Pi,...), Storage (FileSystem, MySQL...), as well as IBM Mobile Push and Watson services on Bluemix.

One great thing with Node-RED is the ability to create your own node, developed with Node.JS.
IBM owns a SaaS service named IBM Mobile Push Notification aka Xtify. It comes with a mobile SDK supporting Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android, Microsoft Windows 8 and BlackBerry apps.

I have created my node using the REST API of that service to be able to notify people in a Node-RED flow on their mobile.

I have used that tutorial to create and deploy my node : http://nodered.org/docs/creating-nodes/

After the deployment, I had a new node in the palette in the Mobile Section.

My node has four properties :

• appKey: Describing the mobile app you'd like to target with this content.
• apiKey: Generated in the IBM Mobile Push developer console.
• xid:  ID linked to the specific device you want to target.
• Subject: String which is the subject line of the message.

These variables are linked to the IBM Mobile Push APIs.

Properties box of my node

The content of the message will come with the payload from the previous node in the flow.

In order to test it, you can create a very simple flow using two nodes : Inject & xtify.

Node-RED Flow

Or you can imagine other uses cases like:

Tweets Sentiment Notifier

In that example, I want to be notified via email for negative tweets, archived in a file for neutral tweets and via my mobile for positive tweets.

But, we can also imagine to use Mobile Push Notification in the context of Internet of Things (IoT).
For example, a Raspberry Pi or a "Connected Thing" sending a MQTT or TCP message.

Use Case:

• An App on my phone called "My Own Track" send my location to Node-RED via a MQTT message.
• Use my location and query OpenWeatherMap API for the weather at that location
• The returned data is then formatted in to my simple message using further function nodes
• The message is then sent to my mobile via IBM Mobile Push

Weather Forecast

All of these examples combine the power of the connectivity of Node-RED and the SaaS Mobile Push services. It works with both Node-RED implementations (on-prem/cloud).
I have published that node here on GitHub.

IBM Interact & Mobile Push Notification (Xtify)

IBM Interact is real-time interaction management software. It determines, in real-time, the best personalized message for each live customer interaction. Can we imagine to link IBM Interact with Mobile Push notification.

IBM provides a flexible, easier-to-use environment (IBM Mobile Push Notification) for creating notification campaigns that engage mobile app users at the optimal time and place. You can target communications based on your business rules, current segmentation, customer relationship management (CRM) data and customer behavior including current and historical locations.

Different integration approaches exist leveraging "Message Connector", automatic event trigger app...
In that blog entry, I have choosen to illustrate a manual notification on the customer mobile app but with a automatic personalisation of the message.

The customer's advisor using his front-office application can send, via a simple click, the best offer generated by IBM Interact to his customer.

In my demo, I use an Android phone, but IBM Mobile Push Notification exists Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android, Microsoft Windows 8 and BlackBerry apps.