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Dev now; Staging and Production next release.
Sending a message and notifying someone are separate. A message you send always appears in the conversation and raises people’s unread counts. Whether it also pushes to their phone depends on where you posted and on each person’s settings.

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Who gets a push

With the default settings: A group or channel post pushes only while the installation’s Notify members when posts in groups switch is on. The company admin sets it when approving your App, and it is on by default. The admin can change it later in Settings → Apps. With the switch off, a DM still pushes, and group and channel posts push to nobody.
A group or channel post is not pushed outside a member’s working hours, for example at night. The default window is 09:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday, in the member’s timezone, and in UTC when the member has no timezone. Under the default, a group or channel post on a weekend pushes nobody. The message still appears and the unread count still goes up. The member just isn’t pushed until they open Workchats. For anything time-critical, send a DM.

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What stops a push

These apply to a message from your App exactly as they do to one from a person, whatever the destination:
  • Quiet hours. A person in quiet hours gets no push, including a DM.
  • A mute. Muting your App stops its DMs to that person. To stop a group’s or channel’s pushes, the person mutes that group or channel. Muting your App alone does not stop its posts there.
  • A focused tab. A person viewing that conversation in a focused tab is not pushed.
The push text is your message’s text, never its blocks. Always send text.

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Choose a destination

  • Use a DM for anything a person must see soon, such as a lead that needs a fast reply. It reaches the recipient at any hour, unless they are in quiet hours or muted your App.
  • Use a group or channel for shared updates that can wait for working hours. Expect nothing on a person’s phone outside them.
  • If you need both, send the DM and post to the channel. Give the two sends different Idempotency-Key values, as described in Idempotency.

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Other sends

  • An edit (PATCH /v1/messages/{id}) sends no push.
  • A reply (reply_to_id) notifies like any other message, because it is not a thread.
  • A delete does not recall a push already delivered.

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Mentions are coming

Mentions are coming. Today the text of a message your App sends is stored as written, so <@usr_…> and <!channel> in text are plain text.