Sending custom notification or starting app from received message

I guess this is a bit of a workaround to the first bullet point on the original post, but you could always have the android app generate a notification, and enable smart notifications for that android app in GCM. The notification would appear on the watch like other notifications you have enabled, but given that it is handled outside the CIQ environment it would not trigger anything in the watch app. The user would still get the notification, but a separate request would be needed to interact with the watch app.

From a UX perspective, I think if the auto-launch-without-confirmation were to be implemented I would prefer it be restricted to do so only from the base watch face. That way current activities/widgets/general usage would not be interrupted.

If there were to be an "autolaunch" permission, the first thing to note is I'm not sure many users pay a great deal of attention to what's requested when installing an app. It's a list with a single button.

They may not understand the impact until the middle of a 10k when suddenly their run goes away and is replaced by some other app.

There's one other "party" that needs to be asked for permission to auto launch - and that's whatever is currently running. Be it something native or a CIQ app. And the default should be "no", so all existing apps wouldn't need a change. I know with many of my apps, they wouldn't respond nicely to just being killed off, resulting in data loss, and would result in support issues with my own apps. "why did I lose the first 4 hours of my hike?"

As asandweeh said, just sending a standard notification would work, as there's already control of when notifications can occur - what can happen during an activity, during configured sleep times, Do Not Disturb, etc.

Another thing to look at is an app with a background process. The background process could just run (given the constraints of when the background can run, due to memory available, etc) and collect the data, and use "requestApplicationwakeup()" to see if the user wants to launch the app. If not, they can run the app later and see what what received.

I completely understand the point about activities, and the fact that activities could be lost by auto-launching a different app.

Maybe the solution could be to only allow autolaunch for widgets, which can run alongside activities. I've just tested this on my vivoactive 3, and it seems even interactive widgets do not interrupt activity recording.

Please, I would really like to implement a system for more customizeable Notifications, but this is blocking my efforts.

As a minimal solution, being able to add text to the app open prompt (similar to the background prompt) would already be a first step.

The ability to run a widget (actually, accessing the widget loop) is only available with native apps (like run) but not with CIQ activity apps, and also, isn't available on the 735 at all. On the 735, it allows a 3rd CIQ data field (other devices only allow 2 - The Epix may allow 3, but I'm not sure), but due to memory, no access to the widget loop is the result,

Thank you for your explanations

Then the solution could be to show a prompt for apps where it would interrupt something? At this point, it feels like an artificial limitation which, in order to protect a usage scenario which only occurs during a short part of the day (activity), cripples the functionality during the rest of the day. This is especially true for the vivo line of products, which are designed for everyday life.

I would really appreciate a dialog with a garmin employee on this

I don't see any reason why a direct push couldn't be supported at times when it is not interrupting an application that has been given priority by the user. Jim is correct that there are times (primarily when any native or CIQ application is active) that the Garmin system is not going to be able to automatically give an event priority, but these devices also spend a majority of their time just displaying the watchface, which is regularly interrupted by notifications.

I've entered a feature request.

Thank you so much Brian

Ohh, wow. The forum engine forgot to notify me that there are new posts on this thread :/

Anyways, it's great to see that someone (Brian) from Garmin found this and filed a feature request. This is mostly the only thing that keeps me from upgrading from my trusty old Pebble Steel to a Vivoactive 3 :)
Hoping the feature request won't be lost in the wild forever and be implemented in the foreseeable future.
Thank you.

Sorry to bring up such an old topic, and please let me know if I'm breaking any rules by doing this.

Have there been any updates on this? Was this feature finally implemented so that devs could create applications that send custom notifications to the watch?

If that's the case, has anybody managed to create such an app yet?

As a Pebble Time user, I'm in the same boat as Dexter was (is?) - Garmin is one of the few brands that seems to be creating watches with transflective LCDs, good battery life and water proof, to the point where I think they could be a good Pebble replacement. Garmin Pay is also the icing on the cake for me, since my bank also supports it.

However, granular control of app notifications is a must for me: I receive hundreds of WhatsApp and Telegram messages in group chats everyday which I absolutely DON'T want to see on my watch, but I want to get notified of private messages sent to me specifically.

This is currently preventing me from spending the money on a Vívoactive 3 since I know I can't use it for notifications in its current state.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated!

You don't have to apologize, but take my advice and forget garmin ASAP and run in the opposite direction!

As much as it seems viable (transreflective display, battery life, water proof, etc.), they just don't care!

Put your money somewhere else where they value you.