Setting up push notifications on your phone
This article is written for participants taking part in a study on Trialflare. If you are a member of a study team, you can point participants here when they are not receiving reminders.
Push notifications are the small alerts your phone shows when Trialflare needs your attention — most commonly when a new stage becomes available for you to complete, when something is due or overdue, or when your study team sends you a message. Exactly what you receive depends on how your study team has set up the study.
Notifications are optional. If you would rather not have them, your study will still work: stages appear in the app as they become available, and you can open the app at any time to check.
When you first join a study
During the setup screens you see after joining a study, Trialflare explains that it can notify you when it is time to complete your next stage, and asks you to continue. Your phone will then show its own permission prompt — tap Allow.
That is all that is needed. There is no separate notifications setting inside the Trialflare app itself; it uses whatever your phone allows.
Your phone only asks once. If you tapped Don't Allow, or dismissed the prompt, the app cannot ask you again. Turning notifications on later has to be done in your phone's own settings, as described below.
Turning notifications on later
If you did not allow notifications when you joined — or you turned them off at some point, or reinstalled the app — there are two steps. Both matter:
- Turn Trialflare notifications on in your phone's settings (instructions for iOS and Android below).
- Re-open the Trialflare app and tap into your study. Trialflare registers your phone for notifications when you open your study, so nothing will arrive until you have done this once after changing the setting.
Step 2 is the one people miss. If notifications look correctly enabled but nothing arrives, open the app and tap into your study, then wait a few minutes.
iOS (iPhone and iPad)
- Open Settings.
- Tap Apps, then scroll to and tap Trialflare. (On older versions of iOS, Trialflare is listed further down the main Settings screen instead, or you can go to Settings > Notifications and find Trialflare in the list of apps.)
- Tap Notifications.
- Turn on Allow Notifications.
- Under Alerts, make sure at least one of Lock Screen, Notification Centre and Banners is ticked. If all three are off, notifications are delivered silently and you will never see them.
- Optionally turn on Sounds and Badges (the badge is the little red number on the app icon).
- If you often miss alerts, set Banner Style to Persistent so banners stay on screen until you dismiss them.
- Check Notification Grouping and, importantly, that Trialflare is not included in Scheduled Summary (Settings > Notifications > Scheduled Summary). If it is, reminders are held back and delivered in a batch at set times of day rather than when they are sent.
Privacy tip: Show Previews controls whether the text of a notification is visible on your lock screen. Set it to When Unlocked or Never if you would rather other people could not read it.
Now re-open the Trialflare app and tap into your study.
Android
Android varies between manufacturers (Samsung, Google Pixel, Xiaomi, OnePlus and so on), so the exact wording may differ slightly from the steps below.
- Open Settings > Apps > Trialflare > Notifications. A quick shortcut on most phones: press and hold the Trialflare icon on your home screen, tap App info (or the ⓘ icon), then Notifications.
- Turn on the main All Trialflare notifications toggle.
- Check the individual categories underneath it as well. Trialflare uses separate categories for notifications that arrive while you are using the app and for scheduled reminders — a category switched off silences just those, even when the main toggle is on.
- For each category, make sure the importance is set to Default or higher. Android's Silent or Minimised setting delivers notifications without a sound and can keep them out of the status bar entirely.
- If your phone asks about Alarms & reminders (Settings > Apps > Trialflare > Alarms & reminders), allow it. Some timed reminders the app shows itself rely on this permission.
- Battery settings matter on Android. Aggressive power saving is the most common cause of missing or very late notifications. Go to Settings > Apps > Trialflare > Battery and choose Unrestricted. On Samsung phones, also check Settings > Battery > Background usage limits and remove Trialflare from Sleeping apps and Deep sleeping apps.
Now re-open the Trialflare app and tap into your study.
Focus, Do Not Disturb and bedtime modes
Even with notifications correctly enabled, your phone can be told to hold them back.
On iOS, Focus modes (including Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Personal, Work and Driving) silence notifications from apps you have not explicitly allowed. Focus modes are often scheduled to turn themselves on — Sleep Focus overnight, for example — so it is worth checking even if you do not remember switching one on.
To let Trialflare through: Settings > Focus > the mode you use > Apps, then add Trialflare to the allowed list (or remove it from the silenced list, depending on how the mode is configured).
On Android, the equivalents are Do Not Disturb, Bedtime mode, and on newer versions Modes. Open Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb > Apps and add Trialflare as an app that can interrupt.
Also check the obvious: your phone's ringer switch or volume. In silent or vibrate mode notifications still appear on screen, but without a sound you may not notice them.
The different kinds of notification
If you are unsure which setting to change, this is roughly what the terms mean:
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Banner / heads-up | The alert that slides in at the top of the screen while you are using the phone. |
| Lock screen | The alert shown on the lock screen when the phone is idle. |
| Notification Centre / notification shade | The list you see when you swipe down (Android) or swipe down from the top-left (iOS) — where alerts wait after you have dismissed them from the screen. |
| Badge | The small number on the app icon showing there is something waiting. |
| Preview | Whether the notification's text is shown, or just the app name. |
| Silent / minimised delivery | The notification is delivered but makes no sound and may not appear on screen — it only shows in the notification list. |
A common situation is having notifications "on" but with banners and sounds off, so nothing appears to happen. If in doubt, turn all of them on to begin with.
Still not receiving notifications?
Work through these:
- Open the app and tap into your study after changing any setting. This is what registers your phone.
- Check you are signed in to the study. You should see your study and its stages when you open the app.
- Check your internet connection. Notifications are delivered over mobile data or Wi-Fi; if your phone has been offline, they may arrive late or not at all.
- Use the app rather than a web browser. Push notifications are not reliably supported when Trialflare is opened in a mobile browser. Install the app from the App Store or Google Play if you have not already.
- Keep the app installed and up to date. Reinstalling the app means allowing notifications again from scratch.
- Restart your phone if settings look correct but nothing is arriving.
- One phone at a time. Notifications go to the device you most recently opened your study on. If you use more than one phone or tablet, open your study on the one you want to be notified on.
- After a long spell with notifications off, Trialflare stops trying to send to your phone. Opening your study in the app again re-registers it.
If none of that works, contact your study team. They can see whether your app is currently registered for notifications, and they can also reach you by email, SMS or WhatsApp instead.
For study teams
- The participants list and each participant's profile show a Push badge when that participant's app is registered for notifications. If the badge is missing, they have not allowed notifications, or have not re-opened their study since allowing them.
- Ask participants to re-open the app and tap into their study after they change any phone setting — the registration only happens then.
- If a participant cannot get notifications working, automatic messages and reminders can still reach them by email, SMS or WhatsApp. See Compliance and engagement.