Android Push Notification Channels were introduced in Android Oreo (Android 8.0 / API Level 26) to provide a unified system to help users manage their notifications. Users can now change preferences for an individual notification channel ( like opt-outs, vibration, and so on) instead of changing it for all the notifications from a specific app.

What do you need to do?

If your app targets Android Oreo (Android 8.0 / API level 26) and above, you must implement one or more notification channels to display notifications to your users. If you don't target Android 8.0 (API level 26) but your app is used on devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26), your app behaves the same as it would on devices running Android 7.1 (API level 25) or lower.

To use Notification Channel, you also need to update MoEngage's Android SDK version to v8.0.00.

Once you update the SDK version, you have to add your existing notification channels created by your App developers on MoEngage Dashboard to use them in your campaigns. You can add them on the go while creating your campaign by clicking on Manage Notification Channel in the Notification Channel dropdown in android messaging.

Once a channel is added, you can select and save it as Default (optional) to populate it as the default selection for the campaigns that you will create in the future.

Once added you can choose any one of the channels for your campaign as you deem fit. All notifications posted to the same notification channel have the same behavior.

If an invalid channel-id has been added or you miss adding one, MoEngage will use General Channel ( a MoEngage Fallback Channel ) to target your users on Android 8.0 (API level 26) and above. 

Note: We do not allow you to create/read/update/delete any Notification Channel for/from your app on the fly. The notification channels have to be created/updated/deleted by your app developers if the need be.

How can end users control their experience?
App developers can't programmatically modify the behavior of a notification channel after it's created and submitted to the notification manager; the user is in charge of those settings after creation. 

End users can visit Settings, or long-press a notification to change these behaviors, or even block a notification channel at any time. When a user modifies the behavior for any of the following characteristics, it applies to the notification channel:

• Importance
• Sound
• Lights
• Vibration
• Show on lock-screen
• Override do not disturb