Set up your messaging project

This page walks you from a brand-new Airship account through creating a messaging project. Configuring channels is largely a developer step. Once your project has at least one configured channel, you’ll be ready to send your first message.

Set up your account

New accounts start on our free plan, and you can upgrade to a more feature-rich paid plan at any time.

Follow these steps to create your Airship account:

1. Create an Airship account on go.airship.com  or go.airship.eu . Make sure your Region selection matches the location where you want your data to be hosted.
2. Check your inbox for a verification email from Airship and click Activate account to open the account setup page.
3. Set up a password.

Now you can enter an email address to request a magic link to install our 1st Flight app or skip. After either choice, your next screen is your DashboardThe Airship web interface at go.airship.com or go.airship.eu., where you can create a messaging project.

Add team members

Invite team members directly to a messaging project and assign an access level for that project. Only Company account Owners and team members with Administrator permission can send invitations and change access. For procedures, see Manage messaging teams and access.

Some actions, such as creating or deleting projects, viewing billing, and modifying login security settings, require Owner permission. By default, each company account has a single Owner. To add additional Owners or transfer ownership, see Adding or changing a Company account Owner.

Create a messaging project

Create a new project from the top-level dashboard:

1. Select Create project, then Messaging project.
2. Enter details about your project:

   • Project Name — You can edit this at any time. If your organization runs multiple projects, adopt a descriptive naming convention so teammates can find it. Examples: “Anytown News iOS — Development” or “McDowell’s Chicago Android — Production”.

   • Icon (Optional) — Upload your icon. This does not have to be the same icon you submit to app marketplaces, but that is the typical practice.

   • Type — Specify whether this project is live or for testing. If this is your first time configuring a project for Airship, you should choose Test. This setting cannot be changed later.

     Eventually you’ll want both a Test build for sending test messages and a Live build for messaging customers. Apple treats production and development servers separately, so a device token from a testing sandbox won’t work in production. See iOS Channel Configuration.

   • Industry — Select an industry type and sub-industry. These are used for reporting.

   • Website URL (Optional) — Enter your homepage URL to provide context for Audience Pulse AI recommendations.

3. Select Create project.

Managing projects

After creating a messaging project, you can access its details, and edit or delete the project.

Next to your project name, select the dropdown menu (), then Project details. From there you can view the following information:

• Project name
• Industry
• App key
• Secret — Requires access level Owner, Administrator, or Full access
• Master Secret — Requires access level Owner or Administrator

To edit the name, icon, or industry, select Edit project details, make your changes, and select Save project details.

To delete your project, select Delete project.

Configure channels

Configuring a channel connects Airship to a delivery platform. Airship provisions email and SMS for you. See Provision Account and Configure your project in the email and SMS Getting Started documentation.

A developer sets up the remaining channels. App and web channels require integrating the Airship SDK. Set up each channel you plan to use:

For cross-platform frameworks, such as React Native, Flutter, and Cordova, see Install and integrate Airship Mobile & Web SDKs.

Next steps

After at least one channel is configured, go to Send your first message. You will send to a Test GroupAn audience group used for previewing personalized content in the dashboard. You can enable any preview group as a test group to send test messages to its members., so you only need your own test recipients, not your full audience.

You add each test recipient by an ID. For app and web, that ID is a Channel IDAn Airship-specific unique identifier used to address a channel instance, e.g., a smartphone, web browser, email address., which is ready once the SDK is integrated. For email, you can add any address. For SMS and Open Channels, the recipient must already be registered in your project. See the following:

• Register SMS Users in SMS Getting Started
• Register a Channel to Your Open Platform in Open Channels Getting Started

If you are migrating an existing Twilio SMS or SendGrid email program to Airship, see Twilio and SendGrid activation.