Push notifications can be opted into if you are using either the Unibuddy app to chat to prospective students in your institution's Community, or the Unibuddy Ambassador app, to speak with prospective students via your institution's Chat platform.
📲 Please note that push notifications are only available if you're using the mobile app! If you use the desktop version via your Ambassador Dashboard, then you can opt in and out of either email notifications, SMS notifications, or both.
There are a couple of reasons, related to mobile device functionality, that can stop push notifications coming through.
The App Force-Shut 📱
Both Android and iOS have functionality built in to ensure that when you "force-shut" an app, it can't perform any tasks in the background. This means that you won't receive any notifications. It's by design by OS developers, and means that no security risks are posed by correspondence making it through to you from an app that you have taken steps to make sure isn't running.
What's a force shut? This means manually closing an app, so it stops running completely in the background, instead of just minimising or switching away from it.
🧪 Test it out! Force-shut your WhatsApp, and then have a friend send you a message. You will notice that you won't get a notification through.
2. Older phone models 📜
It's also true that in some older phone models, closing an app may stop it completely.
Another way the app could be 'force-shut' without you realising it, is if you have turned off your device, or the battery charge runs out. If you don’t re-open the Unibuddy app after turning on the phone again, it's unable to get permission to send through our push notifications.
3. Deactivated account 🌴
⚠️ If your Student or Staff Ambassador account is deactivated, all notifications are suppressed. We don't want to bother you when you're off on your holidays!
What can I do to ensure I receive notifications?
1. Check you have a strong mobile network connection.
2. Ensure you have the latest version of the app downloaded.
3. Unibuddy app sessions expire every 30 days. Therefore you would need to remember to log in within that time frame to ensure you receive these notifications.
(4. Additionally, push notifications within your device's Settings need to be set to ON).
If you like to keep your device clear and force-shut your apps regularly, a good workaround measure would be to enable SMS message notifications instead, to ensure you are notified of incoming messages via Unibuddy.
SMS doesn't rely on the app being open or not, they will still come through to you, even if the app is force-shut.
To do this, navigate/login to your Ambassador Dashboard on your desktop/laptop and select your image on the top right corner of the screen. From there, select the Settings option. You'll then be able to select SMS as your notification preference:
