[UX] Looking for best practice to silence flow's notification when sharing to community?

[​ ​man]

 Each [Dialog…] block and [Sound play] block generate a notification (in notification drawer) and Android notification sound – this is undesirable for [Sound play] block and usually irritating with many [Dialog…] blocks. I use specific Notification channels ("Normal", "Silent", "Off" etc.) but when I share the flow to community I need to do something for user to know  that this is not a bug, he must do it himself and tell him how to set this up or where he can read a manual for this.

 What would be the best approach? To make easy and automatic? First thing – use [Notification channel pick] block and store the variable of silent channel for use in those [Dialog…] and [Sound play] blocks. BUT user has to create such channel before. Can I guide user in it? How to point him to settings page? Is there any link I can give, that describes where and how to do it? Any manual?

[​ ​man]

Well, that's weird, because I remember having to deal a bit with settings to get rid of the Android notification sound while making a flow that played a sound, but there must've been something else, that made problems… :l Nevermind, the channel picking issue described in previous post is still valid for many subsequent Dialog boxes.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

The Sound play block shouldn't show a notification if leave the Notification channel field empty.

If you don't want a dialog block to show a notification, then create and use a notification channel that has the Show notifications option disabled, see Automate Notification channel setting.

[​ ​man]

I know I can set a Notification channel but, as I understand, this is only local setting, for me. When I share flow to community, this won't work for other users, they have to create their own Notifications channels and set them manually on their phones.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Make the flow ask for a notification channel to use at start.

[​ ​man]

Assuming I have to deal with an Automate-newbie, best what I found is:

1) inform the user that to turn off notifications (or notification sound only) he has to choose a (custom) Notification channel for each flow separately

2) if he has such channel, I should let him choose one with Notification channel pick (e.g. for specific dialogs only) or tell him to do it under the flow's description (for whole flow)

3) if not – point him (with App start block) directly to com.llamalab.automate.prefs.NotificationSettingsActivity  (and maybe describe what to do there).

How can I link to internal Automate help to point user directly to e.g. notification_channel?

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

The Notification channel pick block has an + button that let the user create a new channel.

Then to let the user configure the channel, try using the App start block with action= "android.settings.CHANNEL_NOTIFICATION_SETTINGS" and extras= { "android.provider.extra.APP_PACKAGE":"com.llamalab.automate", "android.provider.extra.CHANNEL_ID":uuidOfPickedNotificationChannel }

See: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Settings#ACTION_CHANNEL_NOTIFICATION_SETTINGS

[​ ​man]

Nice! Thank you, that works perfect <3