We just pushed some new updates for our alerts system.

First, webhooks. Basically this means we’ll ping a URL that you give us everytime that alert is triggered, and you can do what you want with the data we pass through to it. Full details on this are on the alert set up page.

A while back we added push notifications for Safari on OS X. More recently, Google Chrome added push notification support, including on Android, which is killer. We don’t have an app so the thought of finally having mobile push notifications was exciting.

We wanted to add support for Chrome notifications pronto, but the security behind push notifications is a flippin’ nightmare to say the least.

Then we discovered Roost, which handles all that for us. So we signed up and implemented that into our site, which was much easier than doing Safari manually was. Roost supports Safari OS X, Chrome, and Chrome on Android, and Firefox is “coming soon”. Two-thirds of you already access Clicky on Chrome or Safari, and when Firefox support comes out, we’ll be looking at almost 90% coverage, so that’s pretty great.

The only thing we don’t like is that we weren’t able to add audio support to these push notifications. Oh well!

So how do you set these up? On the alert set up page is a new checkbox for push notifications, along with a link to manage your push notification devices. Click that link to add your supported browser to your list of devices (if it’s not supported, it will tell you). Then go back to the alert set up page and you can select which device(s) to push to for that alert.

Here’s what the alerts look like in action. When you click on an alert, you will be taken to the visitor session on Clicky. Enjoy!