Introducing Experience Notifications

[raftwarz]

[Update] March 7, 2024

@raftwarz

Hi Creators, it’s me again!

I’m happy to share that Creator Analytics for Experience Notifications is now live in the Creator Dashboard! You can access your analytics by visiting the Creator Hub (create.roblox.com) and clicking Manage Experience or Analytics on your experience’s tile. You can then find Notification Analytics under Engagement → Notifications by toggling the page from Creations to Analytics.

Please note that a minimum of 100 user impressions are required to be able to see notification performance, but the number of opted-in users will be immediately available. You can learn more about analytics in the Analytics section of the developer guides (Lua Creator Guide, OpenCloud Creator Guide).

Thank you.

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[Update] March 4, 2024

@raftwarz

Hey everyone!

We’re excited to share that the OpenCloud and Lua APIs are no longer limited to testing-only and that your Experience Notifications will now be delivered to users.

Now that the APIs have been fully released, you can find the Lua package available for download in the Studio Toolbox.

Creator Analytics will also become available shortly to track the performance of your notifications.

Thank you!

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[Update] February 15, 2024

@raftwarz

Hey again, we’re back with another update!

Users can now turn on notifications for your experience via the new Notifications button, previously the Follow button, on your experience’s main page. We have improved the naming and position for clarity and increased discoverability.

Existing followers of your experience will be retained and will still receive Experience Updates. 13+ followers will now also be eligible to receive personalized Experience Notifications. 13+ users can comprehensively manage all the experiences they have turned on notifications for in the redesigned Notifications Preferences page in Settings.

Notifications will begin to be delivered to users in March. Until then, you can configure and test your notifications using the Lua and OpenCloud APIs in preparation for the user-facing launch.

Thank you!

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[Update] February 8, 2024

@raftwarz

Hey everyone!

We’re excited to share that both the Lua and OpenCloud APIs are live! You can now configure and test your notifications. Please note that notifications will begin to be delivered to users starting in March.

• Lua Creator Guide
• OpenCloud Creator Guide

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback you’ve provided so far. We’re taking it into account as we plan next steps.

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Hey Creators,

We are gearing up to launch Experience Notifications, a new way for 13+ users to keep up with the most important moments in their favorite experiences. Next time their newest pet hatches, their base faces an attack or they need a reminder to complete their weekly challenge, they won’t miss out!

This will be rolling out in various stages:

1. Dev-Facing API Release

   In the coming days, we will release the OpenCloud and Engine APIs to give you time to configure and test your notifications before they are sent to users. We’ll reply to this post to announce the release and share developer guides.

2. Late February: Improved Notifications Opt-In Flow

   Next we’ll roll out an improved opt-in flow for how users can turn on notifications for your experience. At this point, the Follow button on the Experience Details Page will formally become the Notifications button to improve clarity and discoverability.

3. March: User-Facing Launch

   In March, we’ll have the full user-facing launch of Experience Notifications and notifications will begin to be sent to users. We will also release Notification Analytics in Creator Hub at this time.

Personalizing Notification Content and Triggers

Experience Notifications are personalizable so that users can directly receive high-value, actionable information about in-experience activity that is specifically relevant to them. You will be able to determine which moments are most important to notify your users about and set up triggers for when these moments occur. From there, you will be able to customize and automatically personalize the notification content for each user.

Growing Your Reachable Audience

Later this month, we are making several improvements to how users opt-in to receive notifications from your experiences. Currently, users can Follow your experience to receive updates. To help users better understand what this feature does, the Follow button will be replaced with a new Notifications button and be more prominently displayed on Experience Details Pages for improved visibility.

Users who currently follow your experience will remain opted in, with 13+ users now being eligible to also receive Experience Notifications. Users will be able to comprehensively manage the experiences that they are opted into in the improved Notifications Preferences page in Settings launching shortly.

After the initial launch of Experience Notifications, we will also be releasing an additional Lua API that will allow you to prompt users to turn on notifications within your experience. This should make the value proposition of notifications even more clear to your users. We will share more details about this soon.

Notification Delivery

Experience Notifications will be delivered to the Roblox Notification Stream. The Notification Stream is a user’s one-stop-shop for all Roblox notifications and we’re making several UX improvements to it over the next month.

We’ve seen tremendous growth this year in notification interactions, with millions of daily active users engaging with the Stream. Experience Notifications will add even more value to this system, increasing traffic and visibility. Eventually, Experience Notifications will be delivered to additional notification channels to further accelerate your reach and engagement opportunities. We will also share more details on this soon.

Please note that while Roblox will do its best to deliver your notifications, delivery isn’t 100% guaranteed. This protects you as a developer by preventing another experience from flooding users with notifications. There will be a max limit of 1 notification every 3 days per user, which is the same as Experience Update notifications today. While we are starting with conservative limits on delivery frequency per user, we may adjust them over time based on user response and community feedback.

You can track your notifications’ performance and delivery rates in the Analytics Dashboard. The better your notifications and experience perform, the more users they will reach over time.

Implementation

Experience Notifications will involve a one-time, quick implementation process. First, you will define the customizable notification string and personalizable parameters in the Creator Dashboard. Second, you’ll set up a call to our OpenCloud or Engine API to continuously send notifications when the trigger criteria is met for a given user. This whole process should take anywhere between one hour to one day including testing. You will be able to configure and test your notifications shortly when we launch the APIs.

Analytics

You can track how users are engaging with your notifications in the new Notifications Analytics Dashboard. This dashboard will include both aggregate metrics on how many users are opted in to notifications for your experience, overall impressions, clicks and more. You can also track how each notification campaign is performing. Analytics will become available to you in March when notifications will begin to be delivered to users.

We will follow up on this post to officially announce the release of the OpenCloud and Engine APIs, as well as share developer documentation and guides for the feature. You can click the bell icon next to this post to be notified when we announce updates and additional releases, as well.

Let us know if you have any feedback and please feel free to share how you plan to use Experience Notifications for your users!

Thank you.

[Johnny_D3pp (Nik)]

Will this be only for top experiences? There are plenty of ways this could be abused

[Eezby (Ezby)]

This is a really promising feature with lots of potential use-cases for any game. When users join a game through a notification, will any data be sent along with them so you know why they joined the game and through which notification? Example, I notify the user that the rotating shop has reset and new items have appeared. I would want to then know when the user joins my game that they came from the shop notification so that I can immediately show them the shop.

[JoeyKreates]

I’ve been hoping an update like this would happen, finally!

My only quarrel is the limit. I feel since the notifications are opt-in, there’s no need for such a restrictive limit. A much lower limit would add a lot more use cases for this.

[IGOBOOM123]

@raftwarz

max limit of 1 notification every 3 days per user

this is great but at the same time, a 1 day limit would be nice for cases like “Your daily wheel spin is available!”

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Also, why not give us documentation now so we can see how it all works before it’s all released

[IAmPinleon (Pinleon)]

I do understand the need for a notification limit to prevent flooding, but 1 notification every 3 days is a bit much. I feel like the limit should be drastically reduced. I can’t really complain about something that I opted in for.

[darkpixlz]

Great change! Can’t wait for the full release of this.

@raftwarz

There will be a max limit of 1 notification every 3 days per user, which is the same as Experience Update notifications today. While we are starting with conservative limits on delivery frequency per user, we may adjust them over time based on user response and community feedback.

This feels little bit low. Why not like… 1 a day?

[LuaBearyGood]

@raftwarz

• Dev-Facing API ReleaseIn the coming days, we will release the OpenCloud and Engine APIs to give you time to configure and test your notifications before they are sent to users. We’ll reply to this post to announce the release and share developer guides.

Can you read?

[Sushiriceforlife]

Super neat! Waiting on this for a while maybe games with a higher cp status can send more, due to it being less likely to then tryna flood/spam users notifications

[IGOBOOM123]

@LuaBearyGood

Can you read?

poor wording on my part

they said they wanted feedback, they should give us the documentation now if they want our feedback (considering rn, all we have are visuals of what they look like (which are regular notifications ) & the limit for them) instead of waiting till its already released

[xChris_vC (Chris)]

@raftwarz

Please note that while Roblox will do its best to deliver your notifications, delivery isn’t 100% guaranteed. This protects you as a developer by preventing another experience from flooding users with notifications. There will be a max limit of 1 notification every 3 days per user, which is the same as Experience Update notifications today. While we are starting with conservative limits on delivery frequency per user, we may adjust them over time based on user response and community feedback.

I feel this should ultimately be the player’s choice. A game that sends a standard daily notification to spin the wheel is of course much less interesting than a daily summary of attacks on your base, for example.

[Abcreator]

@raftwarz

This protects you as a developer by preventing another experience from flooding users with notifications. There will be a max limit of 1 notification every 3 days per user

Any chance we can see same-experience notifications that pass-out this limit simply “stack” under one notification-entry which can be expanded by the user rather than getting ignored entirely? This would be helpful for experiences that send a few subsequent useful notifications as the user would be able to expand that menu while also not cluttering the UI with a ton of useless notifications that the user doesn’t truly care about.

Feature request for this.

[creativforce (Creativ_Dev)]

Stacking notifications and opt-out from the notification panel would be so nice

[Kyniant (KyniantPlays)]

Looks amazing! Love the new rounded UI.

[WoahItsJeebus (Jeebus)]

@raftwarz

After the initial launch of Experience Notifications, we will also be releasing an additional Lua API that will allow you to prompt users to turn on notifications within your experience. This should make the value proposition of notifications even more clear to your users. We will share more details about this soon.

This is great to hear! Concerning the API and possible unsuccessful notification deliveries; will we, developers, receive an error, delivery status Enum, or other returned value indicating an unsuccessful notification attempt? So we can retry sending a notification?

[MineJulRBX]

I feel like it will equally benefit small games, it’s a great way to keep your players updated on your game, without getting flooded by larger games in results and search. It’s a great opportunity for smaller games to retain interested players.

[patate_aubec72]

This will be a great wait to retain players!

[hyde12345678]

It’s optional for users who wan’t to use it

[Semaphorism (standalone_ecu)]

It’d be nice to have a limit that is dynamic in the future, so if a player hasn’t played a game in a year, they should be limited to 1 every 3 days, but if they play it for hours every day recently, then have a limit of like every 6 hours. This would allow us to send them more actively for users who actually care.