Scheduling a push message

After you’ve built the creative for your message, you’ll move onto the Scheduling step.

You’ll have two basic options: schedule your message as a one-time message or as a recurring message.

Building a one-time message

A one time message is just that—a message that is sent only once to your users.

For a one time message, you can send the message immediately, as scheduled, or using personal delivery time:

Select Send Now to deliver immediately, which is a great option for sending breaking news—for everything else, we recommend scheduling your message.
Select Schedule to specify a date and time for delivery.
Select Personalize Delivery Time to use Localytics to determine the best time to send the message, based on the user's history. For more information, see Personal delivery time.

Scheduled one time

A scheduled message allows you reach your users when they want to be contacted. Scheduling a message means you won’t send someone a 4 AM push about a flash sale—potentially turning them off from your app.

From the Scheduling page:

Select One Time at the top of the page.
Select Schedule.
Select the date and time for delivery.
(Optional) To ensure the message is delivered at the correct time for the user's location, select the Deliver in each recipient's local timezone check box.
- If you select the time zone option, select the beginning time zone from the drop-down list. For more information, see Time zones.
- If you do not select the time zone option, you can use push throttling to control rate of push message sends, thus spreading the load over your servers. For more information, see Push throttling.

Time zones

When you to select the time zone option to deliver your message in each recipient's time zone, you’ll see another line to pick the beginning time zone.

The default setting is the International Dateline—where our time zones technically begin. For the most part, we recommend keeping this default. Using the International Date Line as your starting point ensures that all of your users get your message when they’re supposed to—say, 2 PM local time.
You can change the beginning time zone to account for those one-off messages that shouldn’t go to some users until a certain time. For example, if you’re sending a message that is relevant to your West Coast audience before it’s relevant to everyone else (say, a delayed live stream), you’ll want to set your beginning time zone to the West Coast.

Regardless of what starting time zone you pick, sends will continue for a full 24 hours, to cover all time zones available.

Building a recurring message

You also have the option to send a recurring message, which can be sent out multiple times.

From the Scheduling page:

Select Recurring at the top of the page.

You can choose the start and stop times for the message. If you’re sending a message about a sale or a limited-time offer, you’ll want to pick a start and stop for the message.

The start time can be different from your scheduled time—that way, if you need to hold the message for any reason, it won’t send immediately.

Specify when the message sends start and stop:
- In the Begin field, select on schedule to retain the scheduled time or select at a different time and a date to specify a new start time.
- In the Run until field, select manually stopped or select a scheduled time and a date.
To specify the timing of the message sends, select the cadence (every day, every other day, weekly, monthly), and then select the date and time, as applicable.
(Optional) To ensure the message is delivered at the correct time for the user's location, select the Deliver in each recipient's local timezone check box.
- If you select the time zone option, select the beginning time zone from the drop-down list. For more information, see Time zones.
Select the frequency to send messages:
- Send only one message ever per device
- Allow multiple messages per device
  If you choose to send multiple messages per device, you’ll be able to cap the number of messages the device receives. Select the total number of messages your user receives, the frequency at which they receive them, or both.
Tip: If you do not check either of the boxes for frequency capping, the message won’t be capped and will send as many times as the user qualifies to receive it.
In the Advanced Delivery Options section, you can use push throttling to control rate of push message sends, thus spreading the load over your servers. For more information, see Push throttling.

Note: This option is not available if you selected the time zone option in the Timing section.

Scheduling terms and examples

Here’s a quick overview of each of the push scheduling settings, with some examples to tell you when to deliver each message.

Message Type	Feature	When to use it
One Time	Send Now	You have a one-time message you want to send right away.
One Time	Scheduled	You have a one-time message you want to send in the future.
One Time	Personal Delivery Time	You want Localytics to determine the time to send your one-time message, based on the user's history.
Recurring	Start and Stop	You want your recurring message to execute from the selected start time until the selected stop time.
Recurring	Timing	You have a message you want to send on a recurring basis (where the qualifying audience is refreshed just before every send).
Recurring	Time Zone Delivery	You want every user to receive your recurring messages at the same time of day based on the user's local time zone (rather than Localytics delivering all messages simultaneously).
Recurring	Starting Time Zone	You want to deliver the message in the user's local time zone, based on a selected starting time zone—for example, to accommodate an event that goes live for users in a particular region first.
Recurring	Frequency	Because users may qualify for your recurring message more than once (depending on the audience definition), you want to cap the number of messages a user may receive either within a certain time interval or ever.

When you are done, select Continue and Confirm.