As this is not related to software development with the MIP SDK, which is the focus of this forum, please ask again in the support community, you should get better help from the partners using the support community.
Milestone support suggested I submit the request here since it’s not a notification that can be set up for the mobile server monitoring. Wouldn’t the support community only be able to assist with available features?
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Hi John,
Where do you want to receive these notifications ?
I’m almost sure you can get such in your mobile phone using Milestone XProtect Mobile Client.
Do you need something like that, or you need to integrate somehow with milestone and receive those notifications in some other app/service ?
We want to know when the Mobile Server service stops or starts. We would like to be able to set up a notification to know when/if that happens. I was working with support to find out why the MobileServer service stopped working and they couldn’t provide any insight so it would be great to have Xprotect provide a notification so that we know when it occurs and not when we need to use the mobile service and we find that it’s offline and has been for a long time.
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Hi John,
I spoke with the Mobile devs. They confirmed that you should receive push notification for not running Mobile server on around 15th minute after the event/occurrence (Mobile server stopped, crashed, machine stopped, etc. ).
Of course in order to have push notifications at all, you need to have Care+ license and subscribe for them from the XProtect Mobile app.
Ahh, Care+ is the key. Is there any documentation about setting that up once Care+ is subscribed to? I don’t see anything about that being a feature except an old FAQ for XProtect Essential
https://www.milestonesys.com/globalassets/materials/documents/newsletters/FAQ_XProtect_Essential_2016_R3.pdfThank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Hi John,
You could find mora on configuration here (Client) and here (Server).
Basically all the configuration is done in the clients and once you subscribe you will always receive system notifications (as server went offline for example)
P. S. Sorry for the delay, we had our orthodox Easter 
Thank you, if the Mobile Server service fails and push notifications are enabled, where does the push notification come from? I’m just trying to make sure I understand it.
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Very good question, John !
Actually push notifications are not send trough the Mobile Server itself. It “pushes” them to Milestone centralized service, which makes actual push to Google and Apple Clouds. There are few benefits from this architecture:
- It is not possible a single Mobile Server of a single customer to abuse the Milestone account for push notifications for the particular cloud. In both directions:
- To send notifications on behalf of Milestone.
- To push too many notifications and temporary block the whole Milestone account, thus affecting other Milestone customers.
- It is possible to be pushed system messages (like the one described) with the absence of the Mobile Server. For this one in particular (Mobile Server went offline) Mobile server “pings” Milestone centralized service on a regular basis. In most cases on 5 minutes. If centralized service hasn’t received such “pings” for a while (usually triple the default “ping” interval - around 15 minutes), it pushes such system notification.
Of course the obvious drawback of this solution is the need of centralized service. And it’s support and cost of running it in one Cloud provider. As well as some fees for the push notifications Clouds (Google & Apple). And therefore was decided this functionality (push notifications) to be available only with Care + license. Meaning customers are (indirectly) paying for that.
Thank you for the thorough explanation, that helps a lot.
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Oh yes, one other question. Is there a Smart Client alarm that can be setup to notify if the Mobile Server service stops?
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*
Hi John,
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of such.
But if you have constant problems with Mobile server (like a crashes), you could do at least two more things:
- Contact the support and report the issue
- Try to configure Mobile server in services to restart on every third and sub-sequent crash. By default this is set to “Take no action”
Thanks, Petar. Just wanted to make sure I exhausted all possibilities to report back to our customer.
Thank you,
John Matthies
Technical Support Manager
E: john.matthies@pacintegrations.com
P: 800-479-4722, option 1
www.pacintegrations.com *Updated!*