Custom Task Management Mobile App Development

Imagine: an elevator technician receives a task to replace a cable. They need to photograph the marking, measure the length, and mark completion. In Jira, that's 5 clicks, but on site—gloves and dirt. They need an app with a single screen: task, a "Complete" button, and camera. And it must work without internet because underground parking and construction sites have poor coverage. Any delay disrupts the schedule, so synchronization must happen instantly once connectivity is restored.

We develop such turnkey applications. With 7+ years of experience, we have delivered 50+ projects for construction, service, and logistics companies. We use Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native—selecting the stack for your specific needs. We guarantee stable operation even during connection drops: data is stored locally and synchronized when the network is restored. Notifications are delivered via FCM, Huawei Push Kit, and fallback WebSocket so no event is lost.

How Does a Mobile Task Management App Solve the Offline Problem?

Offline mode is a key requirement for field workers. We use Hive (Flutter) or Room (Android) for local data storage. Synchronization upon network recovery is handled by background workers. Conflicts due to simultaneous changes are resolved using the LWW (Last Writer Wins) algorithm. This ensures no action is lost, even if an employee completes a task in a basement without connectivity.

How Do Push Notifications Ensure Task Control?

Task assigned → executor receives a push with details. Deadline in 2 hours → reminder. Task overdue → notification to the manager. Task completed → notification to the customer or assigner.

This is a basic event-driven workflow, implemented via Firebase Cloud Messaging with priority: high for assignments and deadlines. Deadline reminders are handled by a server-side scheduler (Bull Queue).

Important for B2B applications: an employee may have a locked app store or use a corporate Android (AOSP without Google Services). Then FCM won't work. The solution is to support Huawei Push Kit (hms_push_kit) and fallback to WebSocket when the app is open, or SMS for critical notifications.

What Technical Challenges Do We Overcome?

Main challenges:

• Offline operation: field workers are often in areas without internet. We use Hive (Flutter) or Room (Android) for local storage, synchronization via background workers upon network recovery. Conflicts resolved by LWW (Last Writer Wins). This is critical to avoid losing tasks during simultaneous changes.

• Media confirmations: the executor attaches photos with geotag and timestamp. Compression to 1-2 MB, videos up to 60 seconds with resumable upload. Distance check from the site: distanceBetween < 500 m. This eliminates falsification.

• Complex task hierarchy: project → phase → task → subtasks. We use event sourcing for auditing and rollback. Every change is saved as an event, providing a complete history.

Thanks to offline mode and push notifications, our app delivers critical tasks 2x faster than competitors that only work online.

How We Work on Your App

1. Analytics: Gather requirements, study business processes, identify critical scenarios.
2. Design: Architecture (Clean Architecture), UI prototype, data model.
3. Implementation: Agile sprints of 2 weeks, code review, unit tests.
4. Testing: Load testing, real device testing, beta testing via TestFlight / Firebase App Distribution.
5. Deployment: Publish to App Store and Google Play, set up CI/CD.

Architectural pattern: Clean Architecture with three layers (data, domain, presentation). Dependency injection: Hilt (Android) or GetIt (Flutter). Network: Retrofit/Chopper, local storage: Room/Hive.

Technical Specifications

Why Choose Us?

Experience: 7+ years in mobile development, 50+ delivered projects. Expertise: we master Swift, Kotlin, Flutter, React Native, and integration with 1C and enterprise systems. Guarantee: we provide a 12-month code warranty, free bug fixes after release. Comparison: integration with 1C via REST API reduces reporting time by 3x compared to manual entry.

Development Timeline

Cost is calculated individually after detailed requirements.

After project completion, you receive commented source code, access to App Store Connect and Google Play Console, admin and user manuals, and 3 months of technical support. Free updates for new OS versions are provided for six months. Contact us to discuss your project—we'll estimate timeline and cost for free.

Push Notifications in Mobile App: APNs, FCM, Segmentation, Rich Push

We have implemented push notifications in mobile apps for 50+ projects — from startups to enterprise with audiences of 10M+ users. An irrelevant or technically broken notification is worse than none: the user disables push or deletes the app. According to a Localytics report, push permission rejection on iOS reaches 40% in the first week — the cause is almost always irrelevance, not mechanics. Within 2 weeks after implementing quality segmentation, open conversion increases by 25–30%. Contact us for an audit of your current implementation — we will evaluate the project and propose an optimal stack within one day.

How the Infrastructure Works: APNs and FCM

APNs is the only delivery channel on iOS. Everything else (OneSignal, Braze, Airship) is a wrapper on top of it. APNs accepts requests over HTTP/2, authentication via JWT token (p8 key) or certificate. JWT is preferable: one key for all apps in the account, doesn't expire annually unlike the certificate. For more details, see the official documentation.

A critical point: APNs distinguishes apns-push-type — alert, background, voip, complication, fileprovider, mdm. An incorrect type on iOS 13+ causes background notifications not to wake the app. We've seen projects where content-available: 1 was sent without apns-push-type: background — the app didn't receive silent push on some devices, and the team spent a month looking for an 'app bug'.

FCM on Android works through Google Play Services. For devices without GMS (Huawei, part of the Chinese market), Huawei Push Kit or a direct WebSocket is needed — a separate task. FCM supports data messages (handled in onMessageReceived) and notification messages (the system displays automatically if the app is in the background). Mixing them requires caution: if the notification block has a click_action but the deep link is not registered in the app, tapping the notification simply opens the main screen without navigation.

Why Segmentation Is the Foundation of Effective Push Notifications?

Sending to everyone indiscriminately quickly exhausts user loyalty. Personalized messages are clicked 3 times more often than bulk ones, and proper segmentation reduces churn by 25% (on one project it brought significant additional revenue per quarter). The cost of setting up segmentation in OneSignal or a custom backend depends on the complexity of filters.

Proper segmentation is built on several levels.

Topics are for broad categories: 'new promotions', 'order status updates'. User subscribes via FirebaseMessaging.getInstance().subscribeToTopic("orders"). Simple, but no flexible filtering.

Attribute-based segments — via OneSignal, Braze, or custom backend. We store in the user profile: language, device type, last activity, LTV segment. Notification goes only to those with last_active < 7_days and plan = premium. OneSignal allows building such filters in the interface without code.

Personalized — by specific device_token. It's important to store tokens correctly: the token updates on app reinstall, restoration from backup on a new phone, or resetting settings. On iOS, use UNUserNotificationCenter + didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken, save to backend on every launch, not just the first. Otherwise, after 3 months 30% of tokens in the database are outdated.

What Is Rich Push and How Does It Boost Conversion?

A standard notification with title and text is clicked less often than a rich push with image and action buttons — by 3 times. But implementing rich push is a separate task on each platform.

On iOS, rich content requires UNNotificationServiceExtension (to modify payload) and UNNotificationContentExtension (custom UI). The extension runs in a separate process with limited time and memory. If the extension crashes or exceeds the timeout, the system shows the original payload without media. A typical mistake is trying to load an image over HTTP (not HTTPS): ATS blocks the request, the extension silently fails, and the user sees a notification without an image.

On Android with API 26+, notifications are tied to NotificationChannel. If the channel is created with IMPORTANCE_LOW, sound and vibration are unavailable. Different notification types (transactional, marketing) should be in different channels so the user can disable marketing without losing order notifications. BigPictureStyle, MessagingStyle, InboxStyle are templates for expanded notifications. MessagingStyle with Person and avatars is the best choice for chats.

How to Track Delivery and Conversion of Push Notifications?

Sending a notification is half the work. It's important to know: was it delivered, opened, and did it lead to a target action.

FCM returns a MessageId on send, but does not guarantee a delivery callback — by design. For open tracking, custom logic is needed: on notification tap in onMessageReceived or via getInitialNotification() / onNotificationOpenedApp (OneSignal SDK), send an event to analytics with notification_id.

OneSignal provides built-in delivery and CTR analytics. For more detailed analysis — integrate with Amplitude or Mixpanel via webhook on open events. The budget for such a dashboard varies depending on event volume.

How We Implement Push Notifications: Typical Process

1. Audit current implementation — check token storage, update handling, notification types.
2. Design architecture — choose transport (FCM + APNs), segmentation layer (OneSignal/Braze/custom), personalization method.
3. Implementation — write registration code, inbound handling, rich push, deep linking.
4. Testing — send test campaigns, verify delivery on different devices, simulators, regions.
5. Monitoring and analytics — set up dashboard, open and conversion events.
6. Documentation and training — hand over operational materials to the team.

Typical stack: FCM + APNs at transport level, OneSignal or Firebase Notifications Composer for segmentation, custom backend for personalized event-based notifications. For large apps with >1M users, OneSignal has pricing limits — then we use Braze or a custom implementation on AWS SNS.

Timelines depend on complexity: basic FCM+APNs integration with transactional notifications — 1–2 weeks. A full system with segmentation, rich push, analytics, and A/B testing — 4–8 weeks. Order an audit of your current push infrastructure or get a consultation on implementing push notifications in your mobile app — we will contact you within a day and provide an accurate estimate.