Notification to restore a task rather than a specific activity?

What you need is just a simple Activity that does nothing. Here is an example:

public class NotificationActivity extends Activity {
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        // Now finish, which will drop the user in to the activity that was at the top
        //  of the task stack
        finish();
    }
}

Set up your notification to start this activity. Make sure that in the manifest the task affinity of this activity is the same as the task affinity of the other activities in your application (by default it is, if you haven't explicitly set android:taskAffinity).

When the user selects this notification, if your application is running, then the NotificationActivity will be started on top of the topmost activity in your application's task and that task will be brought to the foreground. When the NotificationActivity finishes, it will simply return the user to the topmost activity in your application (ie: wherever the user left it when it went into the background).

This won't work if your application isn't already running. However, you have 2 options to deal with that:

1. Make sure the notification isn't present in the notification bar when your application is not running.

2. In the onCreate() method of the NotificationActivity, check if your application is running, and if it isn't running call startActivity() and launch your application. If you do this, be sure to set the flag Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK when starting the application so that the root activity of the task is not NotificationActivity.

Works very well, thanks David! The following class checks if the application is already running and if not, starts it before finishing (as suggested by David in option 2).

public class NotificationActivity extends Activity 
{
    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) 
    {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        // If this activity is the root activity of the task, the app is not running
        if (isTaskRoot())
        {
            // Start the app before finishing
            Intent startAppIntent = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), MainActivity.class);
            startAppIntent.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
            startActivity(startAppIntent);
        }

        finish();
    }
}