Understanding message delivery

FCM provides tools to help you get insight into message delivery. In addition to the delivery reports and notification funnel analysis built into the Firebase console, FCM provides comprehensive data export to Google BigQuery.

Message delivery reports

You can evaluate whether the messages you send reach your users. In the Reports tab in the Firebase console, you can view the following data for messages sent to an FCM SDK, including those sent via the Notifications composer and the FCM APIs:

• Sends — The data message or notification message has been enqueued for delivery or has been successfully passed to a third-party service like APNs for delivery. See lifetime of a message for more information.
• Impressions (available only for notification messages on Android devices) — The display notification has been displayed on the device.
• Opens — The user opened the notification message.

You can set a date range for the data displayed, with the option to export to CSV.

Notification funnel analysis

A built-in Notifications funnel analysis shows you how your users respond to a particular notifications sent from the Firebase console, with data for:

• Notifications sent — The message has been enqueued for delivery or has been successfully passed to a third-party service like APNs for delivery.
• Notifications opened — The number of notifications opened.
• The number of unique users who have triggered a conversion event, if one is defined.

To see the Notifications funnel analysis:

1. In the Notifications composer, select the Notifications tab.
2. Click on a completed or in progress message in the message list. An expanded view including a Funnel analysis is displayed.

Analytics reports update periodically, but there can be some delay between when a user opens the notification and when the event data is available in the console.

In addition to these reports under the Notifications tab, you can also build custom funnels in Analytics to visualize the completion rate of a sequence of steps in your app.

BigQuery data export

You can export your message data into BigQuery for further analysis. BigQuery allows you to analyze the data using BigQuery SQL, export it to another cloud provider, or use the data for your custom ML models. Refer to Link Firebase to BigQuery for more information.

1. To get started, use one of the following options:

   • Open the Notifications composer, then click Link BigQuery at the bottom of the page.

   • From the Integrations page in the Firebase console, click Link in the BigQuery card.

     This page displays FCM export options for all FCM-enabled apps in the project.

2. Follow the on-screen instructions to enable BigQuery.

When you link your project to BiqQuery:

• Firebase exports a copy of your existing data to BigQuery.

• Firebase sets up regular syncs of your data from your Firebase project to BigQuery.

• By default, all apps in your project are linked to BigQuery and any apps that you later add to the project are automatically linked to BigQuery. You can manage which apps send data.

To deactivate BigQuery export, unlink your project in the Firebase console.

What data is exported to BigQuery?

The schema of the exported table is:

What can you do with the exported data?

Count sent messages by app

SELECT app_name, COUNT(1)
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
  _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
  AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  AND message_id != ''
GROUP BY 1;

Count unique app instances targeted by messages

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT instance_id)
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
  _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
  AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED';

Count notification messages sent

SELECT COUNT(1)
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
  _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
  AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  AND message_type = 'DISPLAY_NOTIFICATION';

Count data messages sent

SELECT COUNT(1)
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
  _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
  AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  AND message_type = 'DATA_MESSAGE';

Count messages send to a topic or campaign from the notifications console

SELECT COUNT(1)
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
  _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
  AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  AND bulk_id = <your bulk id> AND message_id != '';

Compute fanout duration for a given topic or campaign

The fanout start time is when the original request is received, and the end time is the time the last individual message targeting a single instance is created.

SELECT
  TIMESTAMP_DIFF(
    end_timestamp, start_timestamp, MILLISECOND
  ) AS fanout_duration_ms,
  end_timestamp,
  start_timestamp
FROM (
    SELECT MAX(event_timestamp) AS end_timestamp
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
      AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
      AND bulk_id = <your bulk id>
  ) sent
  CROSS JOIN (
    SELECT event_timestamp AS start_timestamp
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
      AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
      AND bulk_id = <your bulk id>
      AND message_type = 'TOPIC'
  ) initial_message;

Count percentage of delivered messages

SELECT
  messages_sent,
  messages_delivered,
  messages_delivered / messages_sent * 100 AS percent_delivered
FROM (
    SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT CONCAT(message_id, instance_id)) AS messages_sent
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
      AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  ) sent
  CROSS JOIN (
    SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT CONCAT(message_id, instance_id)) AS messages_delivered
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
      AND (event = 'MESSAGE_DELIVERED' OR event = 'MESSAGE_DELIVERED_ON_RECONNECT')
      AND message_id
      IN (
        SELECT message_id FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
        WHERE
          _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
          AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
        GROUP BY 1
      )
  ) delivered;

Track all events for a given message id and instance id

SELECT *
FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
WHERE
    _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
    AND message_id = '<your message id>'
    AND instance_id = '<your instance id>'
ORDER BY event_timestamp;

Compute latency for a given message id and instance id

SELECT
  TIMESTAMP_DIFF(
    MAX(delivered_time), MIN(accepted_time), MILLISECOND
  ) AS latency_ms
FROM (
    SELECT event_timestamp AS accepted_time
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>')
      AND message_id = '<your message id>'
      AND instance_id = '<your instance id>'
      AND event = 'MESSAGE_ACCEPTED'
  ) sent
  CROSS JOIN (
    SELECT event_timestamp AS delivered_time
    FROM [<project name>:firebase_messaging.data]
    WHERE
      _PARTITIONTIME = TIMESTAMP('<date as YYYY-MM-DD>') AND
      message_id = '<your message id>' AND instance_id = '<your instance id>'
      AND (event = 'MESSAGE_DELIVERED' OR event = 'MESSAGE_DELIVERED_ON_RECONNECT')
  ) delivered;