How-to: Set up In-app Messages - Manually or through RSS – Knowledgebase

In-app messages are displayed to the reader in a small dialog box in the middle of the screen, when he/she opens the app. There are two ways to send in-app messages - either manually from Visiolink's backend or automatically through RSS. We'll explain both options in this guide.

How to send in-app messages from the Visiolink Publishing Hub

The Visiolink Publishing Hub is our new userfriendly interface. Please refer to this guide to find out how to send in-app messages: http://support.visiolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/207251539-In-App-Messages

Setup of RSS feed for automatic delivery of in-app messages

The RSS-feed is outputted as XML with a <channel> element as the root element and an <item> element for each message you wish to send. Each <item> element must contain a <date_from> element and a <date_to> element consisting of date and time in the RFC822-format. This defines the interval in which the message is active. Readers, who open the app in this time period, will see the message.

Each <item> element must contain a <description> element containing the text the message should display. In addition to this a unique ID, by your own choosing, must be added in a <guid> element. This ID ensures that the same message is not sent out more than once.

All elements not mentioned above will be ignored. Also the elements <title> and <link> which are mandatory in the RSS standard.

Example of RSS feed containing an in-app message. See also the example file rss_push.xml at the end of this article:

…

<item>

<title>besked</title> Will be ignored

<description>We have now added bookmarks in the app, so you can save articles for later reading</description>

<date_from>Fri, 13 Feb 2015 14:50:00 CET</date_from>

<date_to>Sat, 14 Feb 2015 14:50:00 CET</date_to>

</item>

…

</channel>

To ensure that the messages are always shown in their full length, the maximum length of messages are 200 characters, including spaces.

If you would like to use this option, the app must have the feature In-App Messages, which is available for iOS and Android. Furthermore you will need to contact Visiolink for setup of messages through RSS.

rss_inapp.xml (1018 Bytes)

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