Author: Ian McCutcheon

Push Notifications are an extremely powerful tool in your internal comms arsenal. When you’re adding ‘need to know’ content to your app, a push notification will increase your read rates significantly.

Push Notifications also work with our Content Segmentation feature, in that if you set an Audience for your content, the notification will be sent only to those in the Audience user groups – allowing you target specific sets of employees with your notifications.

How to Send a Push Notification

From a Content Item (such as a Page or Web Page) in the CMS, press the Create Notification button to launch a window where you can select various options for your notification, and enter the text that you wish to send.

You’ll first be asked whether you want to just send an in-app notification (the bell icon in your app) or both an in-app and push notification. You might decide to select an in-app notification only if the content is not terribly important, or perhaps if you have already sent quite a few push notifications recently and don’t want to spam your users with notifications. For important and need-to-know information however, you will usually want to choose to send both an in-app and push notification together:

Now press the Next Step button and you’ll be able to choose when you want to send your notification. You can choose to send it immediately, to schedule it for a specific date and time, or to synchronise it with the scheduled publication date and time of your content item:

Next, simply type the text that you want your notification to say. It’s a good idea to make this a ‘call to action’ such as ‘Tap here to find out about…’ to make it clear to the user that they can tap on the notification to read the full story. Also remember that depending on the device, your text might get cut-off, so it’s a good idea not to make your notification text too long:

Finally, you’ll be presented with a review screen to confirm all of the options you’ve chosen before sending your notification. If you want to change anything, simply go back to the appropriate screen and select a different option:

After pressing Create Notification, the window will close and the notification will either be sent immediately, or at the scheduled time. If you’ve scheduled the notification for later, you can either unschedule it, or edit your notification settings using the Notifications panel on the right hand side of your content:

You can also use this panel to show a detailed notification history for this specific content item or list:

Segmenting Push Notifications to User Groups

When sending a push notification, it will automatically be sent to everyone that the content is available to. By default, the ‘Audience’ is set to Everyone. But if you segment your content to make it visible only to those in specific user groups, the push notification will also only be sent to the users in those groups.

So if the audience tab looks like this (after Saving and Publishing) and you send a push notification:

Then the push notification will only be sent to those who can see the content – in this case, those in the Area Managers user group.

Users can search for content within your Thrive employee app, and Content Editors and Administrators can search within the Content Management System.

Our Search functionality makes it even easier for employees and content editors to quickly find the content they’re looking for. When someone starts to type their search, our search engine begins to look for and surface the strongest matches across all types of content. So rather than just searching page and content titles, you’ll be shown search matches within text widgets on pages, image captions, and even file names, to give a rich array of potential search results.

For our customers with Dynamic Content Translation enabled for their apps, you can also search for, and find content that has been translated into the various languages supported by your app!

There’s a bit more to our Search feature than “You can search for stuff…”

For Users of Your Thrive App

Accessible: A search is easily performed by tapping the new search icon right beside the notifications icon in your app.

Anywhere: Search is available on both your Thrive mobile app and webapp.

Smart Results: The search knows who you are, what permissions you have and what user groups you belong to and will only surface the results that you have access and permission to view. When viewing search results, the search feature also displays the number of ‘matches’ for your search terms helping to illustrate how many occurrences of your term appear within a result.

Dig Deeper: You can select filters for your search, such as searching only for content published in a certain timeframe, searching only for specific content types such as files or images, and only for content in specific languages if your app uses our Dynamic Translation feature. You can also set a filter to make the search only look for content titles should you wish.

Remember: The app remembers what you have previously searched for in the Content Management System (coming soon to mobile and web), so if you have a particular search to perform often you don’t have to type it in each time; just tap on it in the previous searches section.

For Content Editors and Admins in your Thrive CMS

As well as all the above also applying, the CMS search also has a few extras, such as:

Even More Helpful: Below the search bar, you can find tabs which show All Recently Published pieces of content (by any author), My Recently Published content (only content published by you), and My Recent Drafts (content that’s still in Draft status created by you).

Extra Filtering Options: As well as all the filtering options offered in the mobile app and webapp, in the CMS, you can also choose between searching for only Draft or only Published content.

Enhanced Search Results: The search results in the CMS will also show you where in the app (inside which list) the content can be found. In addition, the search result will also contain a link to view that content on your webapp, should you wish to see what that live content looks like in your app.

Mobile technology is a fast moving area and this list is subject to change over time as new versions of each operating systems and device hardware becomes prominent in the market.  Our general rule is to support the latest two major versions of mobile Operating Systems and Browsers, however we temper this with market realities. One such reality is the slow uptake of new versions of Android, in this case we continue to test across the latest three major versions.

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iOS Native Apps

Officially supported iOS versions are iOS 15 & iOS 16. As of January 2023, these account for 89% of all iOS devices. Apple provide up-to-date data of usage here.

For reference, iPhone and iPad devices running iOS 15 and above are:

iPhone SE iPhone 8 & 8+ iPhone X iPhone XR iPhone XS / XS Max iPhone 11 / Pro / Pro Max

iPhone 12 / Mini / Pro / Pro Max iPhone 13 / Mini / Pro / Pro Max iPhone 14 / Plus / Pro / Pro Max iPad 5th – 10th Generation iPad Air 3rd – 5th Generation iPad Pro 12.9″ – all versions

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Android Native Apps

Supported Android Versions are Android 7.1 and above.

Due to the high number of Android devices in circulation, we have to nominate a subset on which to physically test.  Our selection is based on some of the most popular devices sold.

If an Android device is running Android 7.x or below, the Google Play Store will display a message to user, telling them that their device is not compatible with the app.

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Thrive Webapp

The Thrive WebApp is compatible with a range of modern browsers, however the following subset of configurations is explicitly supported and tested. Unless specifically stated, the latest version of each browser is officially supported.

Apple iOS

Browsers: Safari, Google Chrome

Android OS

Browsers: Samsung Browser, Google Chrome

Desktop PC + Mac

Browsers: Google Chrome, Edge Browser, Safari, Firefox

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Thrive Content Management System

App Editors use the Thrive CMS to manage the content of their apps.  The toolkit is a browser based CMS which supports the latest versions of the major browsers in use.

Supported Browsers

Google Chrome (Recommended)

Safari

Firefox

Microsoft Edge

In this section:

• What are Acknowledgements?
• Three types of acknowledgement: Compliance, Events, Competitions
• How to enable each type of acknowledgement in the Thrive CMS

 

Creating Acknowledgement Content

If you have an important brief for employees, and you want them to mark it read and keep track of who has done so, you’ll want to create a Compliance Acknowledgement.

Start by creating a ‘Page’ in the Content Management System which contains the text or attached document as required.

Next, enable Acknowledgement in the panel on the right of the screen, and choose ‘Compliance’, “Event’ or ‘Competition’ as appropriate, from the Choose Type drop-down:

Compliance

Event

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The automatically created usergroup creates a group with all of the users who have signed up for the event. This then allows you to create supplementary content (such as joining details or directions to the event) that will be visible only to the people who said they’re attending.

Competition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If your content is applicable to only some users, you’ll also want to make sure that you’ve selected the appropriate user groups from the Audience tab, so that your content is visible only to the people who need to see it.

Finally, press Save and Publish Now in the CMS.

In the app, your users will receive a notification to let them know that a post requires their attention, and after reading it they’ll be able to press the button to confirm that they’ve read and understood, opt-in to attend the event, or enter the competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A banner will be displayed on the page in the app, to let the user know that a response is allowed, or what the status of the Acknowledgement Content is:

 

 

 

Embedding forms, surveys and polls on a page allows you to add your own text and images along with the activity. If you just want the survey or poll by itself, just follow the guide here to add it as a web link instead.

When you create a form or poll etc online, you’ll be offered an embed code, to embed it on a website. However, the embed code for your mobile app works a little differently.

To demonstrate, we’ll use Surveymonkey as an example. Rather than getting an embed code, you’ll simply want to take the direct web link for your poll or survey:

In Surveymonkey, when you have created your survey, navigate to the “Collect Responses” screen:

 

 

In this screen, you will need to create a new collector for your survey. On the Collect Responses screen, choose ‘Web Link’ as a new collector:

Setting that aside for a second, copy everything from the below embed code in to an HTML module on a page:

 

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Survey Embed</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1" />
<style>body { margin: 0; }</style><style>
.tabweb-container
{ overflow:scroll; }
</style></head>
<body>
<div
class="tabweb-container"><iframe
src="WEB LINK GOES HERE"
width="100%" height="1500px"
frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-forms"></iframe></div>

</body>
</html>

 

Now copy your web link for your form, and copy it in to the HTML code where you see “WEB LINK GOES HERE”. Leave the ” ”  at the start and end of the link in place in the code.

Your HTML module should now look like this:

Now press Save and Publish, and your poll, survey etc will appear embedded within the page.

 

What if your form looks ‘cut-off’ and the submit button isn’t visible?

If your form is more than just a few fields, using the default HTML code above may cause your form to be cut off at the bottom, with the submit button not visible to the user. If this happens, simply adjust the ‘height’ value in the code in your HTML module. The default height is set as 1500px. Try increasing the value and clicking Save and Publish each time until your entire form and the submit button is visible.

After adjusting the height, our full embedded form with the submit button is now visible:

 

The insights dashboard replaces our Google Analytics integration with an in-house solution. It’s now super easy to report on your app usage. The dashboard has been designed to be extremely intuitive. Please see below for an explanation of how it works:

The People Directory is a searchable employee directory, displaying contact details of all your employees who have been added as users to your app.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The People Directory is currently searchable by:

• Name
• Job Title

When activated in your app, it will appear in the sidebar menu beside the app settings and logout buttons.

Where the data comes from

The user’s name, department and job title will automatically be pulled from your user upload file, while the phone number, email address and profile photo need to be added manually by the user in their own user profile screen (at the top of the sidebar menu).

 

Call or Email from the app

One of the big benefits of the People Directory is that if a user adds their email address or phone number to their profile, then ‘Call’ and ‘Email’ buttons will be added to their profile in the directory, allowing them to be called or emailed directly from the app. Upon tapping call or email, the phone’s dialler, or default email client will be called to complete the call or email.

Activating the People Directory in your app

To turn on your People Directory, click the Cog Icon at the top of the CMS to access your administration settings. Then click on the channels menu, and on the channel for which you want to enable the directory:

Now tick the ‘People Directory’ feature, and save your changes:

 

After you save, refresh the menu in your app, you’ll see the ‘People’ option appear at the bottom of the main menu, beside the settings and logout options.

Please Note: Although you can enable the People Directory on a per-channel basis, the directory itself will always show all users from across your organisation, regardless of which channels those users have access to.

 

 

User Generated Content is a great way to allow your employees to get involved, and engage with your app. With this feature, you can allow your users to post directly from their phones – in specific designated sections of the app. Users can add images and text, and you can moderate the posts before they go live if you want to.

Some of our customers use this feature to create a ‘selfie wall’ in their app, as a place to encourage the sharing of best practice, or even as a ‘buy and sell’ section.

Users make posts from their phones, and others can like and comment. Share pictures, run competitions, share best practice, create a Q&A section – UGC has loads of use cases.

  

 

Any time you need your users to post to the app, you can use our User Generated Content feature. You can even choose if you want only specific groups of people to see the ‘Post’ button. For example, you could have a section that your employees can read, but managers can post to – giving your managers a way to quickly disseminate information in the app without having access to the Content Management System!

 

Setting up User Generated Content

1. Choose List Type

In your new list, go to the ‘List Type’ tab and choose ‘User Publishing List’. This tells the CMS that it’s a list that’s going to receive its content from users in the app itself, so there will be a button in the app for users to press to make a new post.

The default list (posting only from the CMS) is on by default, and you can find more information about the Recognition List by clicking here.

 

2. Choose who can post

Next, you get to decide if everyone can post in this list, or if only specific user groups get to see the button to post. Remember though, the List’s ‘Audience’ tab still governs who can see the list – this bit below just governs who can post to the list.

If you want everyone to be able to post, you don’t need to do anything:

 

But if you want to restrict who can post, you’ll need to choose those user groups. This is useful if you wanted to create a section where senior managers can post directly – where you want everyone to be able to read the posts,  but only for the senior managers user group to be able to post there.

 

3. Choose your button text

Now, choose what the button in the app is going to say. If your list is a selfie wall for example, it might say ‘Post a Selfie’ or if’s a Buy & Sell section, it might say ‘Post an Ad’:

 

4. Choose your posting options

First choose whether you want to make it mandatory for users to include text or images with their posts.

Allowing users to send push notifications will automatically send a push notification out to all users every time there’s a new post to this section of your app. So we don’t recommend enabling this unless you have chosen  for only a small group of people to be able post.

Enabling post moderation means that the posts will appear in the content management system in ‘Draft’ status. Once you have approved the post in the CMS, simply press Save and Publish Now to make the post visible to all users.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After your iOS app has passed Apple’s review, you’ll need to purchase redemption codes, to allow your employees to download the app.

Your Client Success Manager will let you know when it’s time to do this, and here’s the process to follow:

1. Log in to your Apple Business Manager account, and click on custom apps in the menu on the left. Then click on your app:

2. Now in the license type option, choose ‘Redemption Codes‘ then enter the amount that you need, and click Buy / Get. The codes will be free. As they’re free, we recommend that you get a lot more than you need, so that you don’t have to keep topping up.

It’s really important that you choose the correct option here, so please ensure that you have selected Redemption Codes before completing.

3. Now you need to send your Redemption Codes to your Client Success Manager. After you’ve completed the steps above, simply wait for around five minutes, then refresh your browser page. At the the bottom of the screen, a ‘download’ link should appear beside the confirmation of your codes. Clicking this downloads an Excel file containing all of your unique codes. Please send this Excel file by email to your Client Success Manager.

We’ll then be able to make the app downloadable from your myapp.is page, and one of your unique redemption codes will be redeemed when your users click on ‘download’.

After you’ve created your Apple Business Manager Account, there’s a little bit of housekeeping to do

1. Let us know your organisation ID
2. Let us know the name of your organisation exactly as it appears in your account
3. Enable custom apps for your account
4. Enter and verify your business tax information

1 & 2: Where to find your organisation ID and the name of your organisation:

You’ll find these in Settings > Enrolment Information. Once you’ve found these, please send them to your Client Success Manager at Thrive.

3. How to Enable Custom Apps for your account:

You can also find this setting in Settings > Enrolment Information > Custom Apps > Enable

4. How to enter and verify your business tax information:

Simply click on ‘Apps and Books’ in the menu on the left side of the screen. You should see a blue button that says ‘Get Started’. Click this button and follow the instructions on-screen to verify your tax information.

That’s it! After we build your app, you’ll be able to log in to your Apple Business Manager account to purchase your redemption codes. Your Client Success Manager will reach out to let you know when it’s time to do that.