7 Things to Keep in Mind When Migrating Push Notification from Airship to Adobe Campaign

| Last Updated December 15, 2021 - by michelle chan under data activation

If you are reading this article, chances are you’re either considering or already in the process of transitioning your push notification channel from Airship (formerly Urban Airship) to Adobe Campaign. Whether you are taking on this migration journey to unify your customer’s multi-touchpoint experience or to adopt capabilities only available through Adobe Campaign, there are a few things you want to keep in mind during your transition that will help make for a smoother ride.

SDK

One of the biggest differences between Adobe Campaign and Airship is their SDK. Airship’s SDK allows for easier integration while Adobe Campaign’s SDK allows for more control. When installing the Adobe SDK, developers may find themselves a longer checklist of configurations to be made but they’ll also get a better sense of how data from your app interacts with Adobe Campaign and vice versa.

The SDK for Adobe Campaign Classic is implemented using the Adobe Campaign Classic extension through Tags (formerly Adobe Launch).

Here is a high-level checklist of configurations that need to be made as part of installing the Adobe SDK:

Load Campaign SDK
Declare integration settings
Set registration function
Set tracking function
Set silent notification tracking
Set Campaign variables
Add notification service extension
Add notification content extension

Analytics & Reporting

Another major difference to keep in mind is the analytics available to you with each platform. Airship’s reporting measures both engagement with the push notification as well as interaction with the app post-click. Adobe Campaign on the other hand does not capture interaction with the app beyond the push notification engagement. However, with added implementation and a key identifier (such as ECID) for each device, data between Adobe Campaign and Adobe Analytics can be merged together to render a full picture of your mobile push campaign.

User Interface

In Airship, users may be used to a form-type interface whereas in Adobe Campaign, users will be expected to take advantage of their drag-and-drop, visual workflows. Adobe Campaign’s workflows allow for extensive flexibility and customization of processes, segmentation, dynamic content and more. However, with such a difference in the interfaces, this is something users may need to adapt to.

Android Messages

There are two types of FCM (Firebase Cloud Messaging) messages that can be sent to Android devices.

Notification Messages – also known as “display messages”, these messages are handled by the FCM SDK automatically. Additional data payload is optional.
Data Messages – these messages are handled by the client app and how the app processes these messages is up to the client.

Airship sends notification messages while Adobe Campaign send data messages. It is important to note that when transitioning to Adobe Campaign’s SDK, you must configure the app to know how to handle the data messages and display them to the end-user if that’s the intent.

Deep Linking

Deep linking configuration differs slightly in Airship than Adobe Campaign, where in Airship, users will select from a drop-down denoted as Deep Link and in Adobe Campaign, the user will create an additional parameter by a name of their choice. However, in both tools, the app developers will have to “teach” the app on how to handle these deep links.

Importing Existing Registration Tokens

When you’re migrating platforms, one of the most important things is to ensure you’re not leaving your mobile users behind. Plan to import all valid registration tokens from Airship into Adobe Campaign. You can do this by either extracting the data directly from Airship’s platform or through an API and then uploading the extract into the right table within Adobe Campaign using workflows.

Android registration tokens are always mixed casing whereas iOS registration tokens can sometimes be all lower casing or all upper casing. If importing existing registration tokens from Airship into Adobe Campaign, pay attention to the casing of iOS registration tokens to avoid duplicate records.

Opt-Out Tracking

Opt-out tracking is important as it can help marketers determine whether their communication strategies align with end-user’s priorities. However, unlike email, push notification opt-out tracking is not a straightforward functionality, and this is true for both Airship and Adobe Campaign. In both platforms, the developer must enable silent push notifications to be used for identification of uninstalled devices. Once configured, users can bring this data point into their reporting which may be custom-built within Adobe Campaign.

Some of these callouts may sound trivial but for the same aspect, they can also be easily overlooked. Knowing these 7 key differences may save you time and brain cells when running into hiccups during your migration.