Known Issues And Fixes

Known Issues & Solutions

This section collects known issues and their potential solutions. These issues are not caused by IBM Notifier itself, and as a result, the team cannot directly deploy fixes to the code.

General Tips for Addressing Issues:

• Testing Workflows: Always test the app using real workflows when it's signed and notarised. If the app lacks a signature or notarisation, macOS might handle IBM Notifier differently.

1. IBM Notifier Banner/Alert shows the crossed App Icon in the Cotification Center - Discussion

The issue described appears to be sporadic and can occur with any app installed on macOS. This inconsistency makes it challenging to replicate. Potential reasons for this behavior include:

- The app does not have the proper notification permissions;
- The app hasn't been appropriately signed or notarized;
- Issues originating from the Notification Center.

If you've confirmed that the app is properly signed and notarized, a potential quick fix is to restart the Notification Center process:

> killall NotificationCenter

2. Notification Agent rich notification authorization request ended with error: Couldn't communicate with a helper application - Discussion

We couldn't reproduce the issue. Historically, it often surfaced when invoking the IBM Notifier using:

- sudo -u USER ...
- launchctl asuser USER ...

However, starting from version 2.3.1, these commands are no longer necessary. Removing them should resolve the undesired behavior.

3. The application IBM Notifier is not open anymore - Discussion

We were not able to replicate this issue. This is most likely cause by a call to the same process pid once the application got closed by the user interacting with it. Be mindful of this when building your script to interact with IBM Notifier. Remember to spin the Notifier process on a subprocess if you expect to kill the script before the end of the execution of the Notifier process.

4. Notification Agent rich notification authorization request ended with error: Notifications are not allowed for this application

An issue arises when attempting to trigger a banner or alert UI with IBM Notifier immediately after deploying the profile that enforces notification authorization for it. In this scenario, macOS seems to recognize that a profile has been deployed for the specific application, yet it struggles to load the profile's payload. As a result, macOS defaults to treating the authorization as "not granted."

To address this issue, you can restart the notifyd process:

> sudo killall notifyd

However, this solution is effective only if the aforementioned error has occurred. Restarting the process immediately after the profile installation will not preemptively prevent the error. Use this approach as a remedial measure in a "second attempt" workflow for IBM Notifier Alerts/Banners.

A suggested workflow to remedy the issue is as follows:

1. Install IBM Notifier.
2. Deploy the Notification Authorization profile for banners/alerts.
3. Attempt to trigger an alert.
4. If you encounter the error, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, skip to step 7.
5. Execute sudo killall notifyd.
6. Attempt to trigger an alert again.
7. The alert UI should now display without errors.
8. Now, attempt to trigger a banner.
9. If you encounter the error, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, skip to step 12.
10. Execute sudo killall notifyd again.
11. Attempt to trigger a banner once more.
12. The banner UI should now appear without issues.