I am successfully sending Push Notifications from the Mixpanel Dashboard to a Cordova app on both iOS and Android devices, using phonegap-plugin-push.
However, the title and body values entered in the default fields only appear on iOS devices.
For the notification to appear on Android devices, I currently need to include a custom payload in Mixpanels "Custom Data":
{
"title":"Title for Android only",
"body":"Content for Android only"
}
This is an error prone step for any non-technical using Mixpanel to send notifications.
Does someone know an easier way to do this?
The short answer here is that Cordova/Phonegap and similar third party frameworks are not 100% optimized for Mixpanel functionality (although they work pretty great), and as such you'll need to generate separate push notifications for both iOS and Android in your Mixpanel project.
Providing context, all iOS pushes regardless of app deliver a JSON payload to APN using the same keys to deliver their messages (alert, badge, sound). However, the keys that Android apps process for incoming GCM pushes are entirely dependent on how the GCM receiver is established, and therein lies the problem here.
Mixpanel's Android SDK initializes pushes and uses a GCM receiver that is specific to Mixpanel messages, and fully expects its custom keys (mp_message, mp_title) in order to render the notification. The webapp reformats the message input to meet these key requirements (http://bit.ly/1OGgU1y)
However, the Phonegap GCM receiver expects different keys as you've noticed. I'd recommend referring to the phonegap github page in order to get more context into the expected push format and behavior (looks like they expect "title" and "message" as the keys): http://bit.ly/1KDScye
Unfortunately, what this means is that the Android app is not optimized to receive the default, web-app generated Mixpanel pushes, although your iOS one is. Mixpanel's SDKs are intended to maximize capabilities for that platform, and it isn't guaranteed that Cordova or similar JS frameworks will translate 100%.
So to conclude - Creating a message in the Mixpanel push editor will send to iOS, but for Android you'll need to use the custom JSON payload in a separate notification, including keys that the phonegap GCM receiver is compatible with.