Tracking Users

WebEngage offers APIs for creating and updating users. Both of these operations can be performed using the /users endpoint described below.

🚧

Must Read

We recommend that you get yourself acquainted with all the concepts related to Users and Events before proceeding. Doing so will help you understand the workings of this section, better.

Identifying Users

At WebEngage we start detecting users as soon as you integrate your platforms through our SDK. Each time a user visits your website, the WebEngage SDK automatically creates a unique ID (Anonymous ID) for them. This helps us record users in our backend and create an anonymous profile. All their behavioral data and session data (System Events, Custom Events, System User Attributes and Custom User Attributes) are stored under the anonymous profile.

You can assign a unique ID (CUID) to each user to identify them. We recommend that you assign a CUID at any of the following moments in their lifeycle:

• On signup.
• On login.
• On page views where user's identity becomes known.
• When the user context changes.

🚧

You can assign:

• Anonymous ID by passing the parameter, anonymousID in the request body described below.

• CUID by passing the parameter, userId in the request body described below.

Whenever a CUID is assigned to a user it means that:

• The user is identified (they become Known Users in your dashboard).
• A new, Known User Profile is created for them that contains all their data.
• All their previous anonymous profiles are merged with the new Known User Profile to create a single unified view of your users. (This means that data from their first visit to your website to their latest interactions can all be found under a single user profile!)

👍

How User Profiles are Merged When User is Identified (assigned a CUID by you)

Let's assume that User A visits your website a few times before signing up.

User A visits your website on Day 1: WebEngage assigns them an anonymous ID and automatically creates an anonymous user profile containing all their data (Anonymous Profile 1).

User A revisits your website on Day 3: WebEngage assigns them an anonymous ID and creates another anonymous profile to record all their data (Anonymous Profile 2).

User A revisits your website on Day 7 and creates an account: On account creation, you can choose to assign the user a CUID. This will lead to the creation of a new user profile.

• As soon as the Known User Profile is created, WebEngage will run a quick check in it's backend to identify all the existing anonymous user profiles of the user that were created on their previous visits.

• In this case, Anonymous Profile 1 and Anonymous Profile 2 will be merged with the final profile of User A to provide a unified view of their preferences and behavioral history.

Guidelines

• An ID can have of maximum 100 characters.

• Once assigned, a user ID cannot be changed.

• Although ID can be any String that uniquely identifies users in your system, we recommend using system-generated user IDs from your database instead of information that can change over time such as email addresses, usernames, or phone numbers.

User Attributes

Several details like a user's name, email address, location, and so on can be associated with their user profile. All such details are referred to as User Attributes which can be of 2 types - System User Attributes and Custom User Attributes. (All user attributes are tracked for both, anonymous and known users.)

WebEngage provides setters for assigning values against each attribute for your users. These attributes can be used to segment users, configure campaign targeting, and personalize messages sent through each channel of engagement.

Each session has its own user attributes that get copied from one session to the next. This is in contrast to event parameters, which may take on different values in each session. For this reason, we recommend that you use user attributes for recording details that don't change with each session or details with which you want the entire session to be associated.

Setting System Attributes

You can set system attributes by passing them as parameters in the request body described below.

Setting Custom Attributes

You can set the value of Custom Attributes by passing them as key-value pairs in the attributes parameter in the request body described below.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• User Attribute names are case sensitive and must be less than 50 characters long. String attribute values must be less than 1000 characters long. Additional characters will be truncated.

• You can create a maximum of 25 Custom User Attributes of each data type.

• userAttributeName must not start with we_. Names starting with we_ are reserved exclusively for internal use at WebEngage. Thus, to avoid data contamination for your account, such data will be ignored if used for your Custom User Attributes.

• If the attribute value is JSON Object, it cannot be used to create user segments. It can only be used to personalize campaigns.

• The first datapoint synced to WebEngage defines the data type for that user attribute. Thus, data types must be consistent with the value that you want to store against the attribute. If the data type is changed at a later date, then Custom Users Attribute data will stop flowing to your WebEngage dashboard.

/users

METHOD: POST

URL STRUCTURE: <HOST>/v1/accounts/<YOUR_WEBENGAGE_LICENSE_CODE>/users

AUTHENTICATION: Bearer Authentication Scheme

DEFAULT API CALL RATE LIMIT: 5,000 per minute

Headers

EXAMPLE

curl -X POST <HOST>/v1/accounts/<YOUR_WEBENGAGE_LICENSE_CODE>/users \
    --header 'Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_KEY>' \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data '{
    "userId": "johndoe",
    "firstName": "John",
    "lastName": "Doe",
    "birthDate": "1986-08-19T15:45:00-0800",
    "gender":"male",
    "email":"[email protected]",
    "phone":"+551155256325",
    "company":"Alphabet Inc.",
    "attributes": {
    	"Age":"31",
      "Twitter username": "@origjohndoe86",
      "Dollars spent": 461.93,
      "Points earned": 78732
      }
    }'

🚧

Please ensure that you:

• Replace HOST with the applicable host mentioned here

• Replace YOUR_WEBENGAGE_LICENSE_CODE with your WebEngage license code

• Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your WebEngage API key

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters that can be updated through the API:

Returns

{
	"response": {
		"status": "queued"
	}
}

Errors

List of API error status codes.

{
  "response": {
  "message":"Error: userId and anonymousId cannot be empty.",
  "status":"error"
	}
}

Please feel free to drop in a few lines at [email protected] or get in touch with your Onboarding Manager in case you have any further queries. We're always just an email away!