How to Use Remote Config Console in Firebase?

With the help of the cloud service Firebase Remote Config, you may modify the behavior and aesthetics of your app without having to wait for users to download an update. Create in-app default values that regulate your app’s behavior and appearance while utilizing Remote Config. You can later override in-app default values for all app users or for certain user segments using the Firebase console or the Remote Config backend APIs. Your app can be configured to use Firebase Remote Config with in-app default values, deployed, and then the Firebase project connected to your app can be configured to change those defaults later. The frequency with which your app checks for updates and applies them can have little influence on performance. Your app controls when updates are deployed.

Let’s see what depth can Firebase Config Console Provides us with, like all the other articles in this series, we will be breaking it down to a tabular form:

Particulars	Features
A/B tests can help you improve your app.	Before rolling out changes to your whole user base, you may use Google Analytics A/B testing and random percentile targeting to test changes to your app across various user base groups.
Roll out updates to your app’s user base quickly.	By altering the settings of server-side parameters, you can change the default design and functionality of your app. Without having to publish an app update, you might, for instance, utilize a Remote Config parameter as a feature flag to alter your app’s layout or color scheme to suit a seasonal offer.
Adapt your software to different user groups.	By app version, language, Google Analytics audience, and imported segment, you may utilise Remote Config to give different user segments of your app alternative user experiences.
To automatically and continuously personalize your app for unique users and to make it more effective for your business’s objectives, use Remote Config personalization.	With Remote Config personalization, utilise machine learning to continuously adjust each user’s experience to optimize for objectives like user engagement, ad clicks, and revenue—or any custom event you can monitor with Google Analytics.

So everything Firebase Console offers you, and without saying comes with it is the software support that is backed by Google. You might wonder how it manages to pull everything, so it would be worth understanding how the various features work.

Working Code behind the Remote Config

The client library that comes with Remote Config takes care of crucial functions like obtaining parameter values and caching them while still letting you decide when new values are activated to affect your app’s user interface. This gives you the ability to manage the timing of any modifications, protecting your app experience.

You can create parameters with the same names as the parameters used in your app and override in-app default values by using the Firebase console or the Remote Config backend APIs. You can create conditional values to override the in-app default value for app instances that satisfy certain criteria as well as server-side default values to override the in-app default value for each parameter.

One access point for parameter values is provided by the Remote Config client library get methods. Because your app obtains server-side values using the same reasoning as it does for in-app default values, you can add Remote Config functionality to your app without adding a lot of new code.

Rules and Restrictions

Observe the following regulations:

• Avoid using Remote Config to update apps that need a user’s permission. This might make people think less highly of your software.
• Never store private information in Remote Config parameter values or keys. Any parameter keys or values kept in the remote configuration settings for your project can be decoded.
• Avoid attempting to use Remote Config to get around the platform requirements for your app.

Steps to use the Firebase Remote Config Console

Step 1: Register the app with the Remote Config Part in the Console

Use Remote Config to specify which features of your app’s behavior and appearance you want to be able to change, then transform those specifications into the app’s parameters.

Image #1: Configuring the Project with the Remote Configuration

Step 2: Setting up the Defaults

Using setDefaults(), you can retrieve your Remote Config template defaults and change the in-app default settings for Remote Config parameters. As in the image above, you need to provide the default values or accept the in-app default values by toggling that switch.

Step 3: Build the Function from the template or from Scratch

Activating parameter values that have been safely and effectively obtained from the Remote Config backend by your program. Therefore, you don’t need to worry while creating your app about when to fetch values or even if any server-side values exist. To read the value of a local variable that your app has defined, similar to getting the value of a parameter, your program uses get methods.

Conclusion & Use Cases

It can be unsettling to roll out a new feature to all of your app’s users because you never know how they’ll react. For this reason, many developers employ Remote Config to implement a percentage rollout and gradually introduce new capabilities to consumers.

Add a new condition to an existing Remote Config parameter with the condition “User in random percentile” and a value of 10% to execute a percentage rollout on the parameter

Another example could be, considering wanting to activate a promotional splash page in your app before an upcoming e-commerce sale. Consider a scenario where you want to alter the splash page to match the location that the user has selected for their device. You can create a parameter called promo splash graphic, assign static URLs to it (hosted on Firebase Storage or somewhere else), and then dynamically access those URLs in your app.