Customization and Rebranding Android, iOS and Web Messenger

With the complete source codeopen_in_new at your disposal, you have the freedom to customize every aspect of these apps to meet your specific requirements and branding. Not only can you modify the app's visual appearance, but you can also customize how each message is rendered (which we will cover in our upcoming chatbot tutorial).

Although we won't cover all the possible customizations in this tutorial, we will focus on some important ones, as follows:

User Verification

For the demo apps, we utilized phone number verification for login in which app can send an OTP (One-Time Password) to the user's phone number, which they could enter to confirm their phone number.

However, you have the flexibility to use other forms of verification, such as email addresses, user account IDs, or your organization's IDs. You can customize the entire login process to suit your preferences. The key is to generate a mesibo user token using your secret App Token only after the user passes your authentication.

To make these changes, you need to modify:

• Your own login screens, allowing users to enter the required credentials (e.g., email, user ID, or password).
• Private APIs (explained in the next section), which you can adapt to your app's specific authentication requirements. For example, you might check your own database for a valid user.

OTP Generation

In the demo apps, we used the mesibo console to generate OTPs. However, for a real deployment, you would typically send the OTP to the user so they can enter it on the login screen. You can utilize any SMS provider of your choice to send the OTP. Refer to the next section for details on how to ingrate SMS functionalities in your app.

Geolocation - Google Maps and Google Places

Mesibo Messenger allows users to select and send their location to friends and family. This feature relies on the Google Maps and Google Places SDK on Android. Therefore, you must add your Google Maps and Google Places API Key to the project for this functionality to work. On iOS, the app uses either Apple Map or Google Map or both.

For instructions to get API key and configure it, visit

• For Android, https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/android-sdk/signupopen_in_new
• For iOS, https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/ios-sdk/get-api-keyopen_in_new

Media/File Storage

In addition to text messages, mesibo enables you to send and receive various file types in real-time, including images, videos, and documents. Sending and receiving files is no different from sending and receiving text messages. Mesibo Messenger provides the flexibility to store files on your own servers, whether they are private servers or cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure, etc. To achieve this, you need to configure the upload and download URLs in the source code.

By default, the Mesibo Messenger source code is configured with temporary upload and download URLs that store files for a limited time and have a quota limitation for demo purposes. Therefore, it's crucial to provide your own upload and download URLs to ensure seamless file storage and retrieval.

Conclusion

In this part, we explored few customization options available for Mesibo Messenger. Thus far, you have been using the backend that we hosted for you, allowing you to quickly experiment with the apps. In the next part, we will learn how to host the backend on your infrastructure, providing you with full control and scalability. Stay tuned