Before Using Unknown User Activation

This article provides information you need to know before enabling Unknown User Activation in your Iterable project.

# In this article

# Prerequisites

Before you start using the Unknown User Activation feature, consider the following:

• Compliance requirements. Ensure that data collection complies with all applicable laws—as Iterable's customer, you are responsible for all data collected and sent to Iterable or stored on-device or in browser local storage.

• Required permissions. To access the Unknown User Activation page and view and manage unknown users, you need the Manage Settings permission for your project.

• What's supported? Unknown User Activation is supported for:

  • All Iterable project types (email-based, user ID-based, and hybrid)
  • Projects hosted in either of Iterable's data centers (US or EU)
  • Data for profile creation criteria that includes:
    • Events (custom events, purchase events, cart update events)
    • Contact properties/user profile fields (long, double, boolean, object, array, and string data types) and their associated fields

  At this time, Unknown User Activation doesn't support system events, Iterable-managed contact properties (for example, Predictive Goals and devices), and event attributes (campaignId, templateId). Profile fields of type date, geo_location, lat/lon, and join data types are also unsupported.

# Unknown user data management

It's important to understand how Iterable manages data that's related to unknown users:

• Data storage. Unknown User Activation stores user profile updates, cart update events, purchase events, and custom events locally (on a device or in a browser) until a user signs up, logs in, or satisfies any of your project's profile creation criteria, at which point it is replayed to Iterable and deleted from local storage. By default, the SDKs store a user's 100 most recent events (this limit is configurable via eventThresholdLimit — see the iOS, Android, and Web SDK configuration articles for details).

• Managing userId values for unknown users. Keep these guidelines in mind when managing unknown user profiles:

  • It's not possible to manually choose a userId for an unknown profile, or to assign one from a CDP. Iterable may add this functionality in the future.
  • Don't manually update user IDs for unknown users – if you do, Iterable won't consider those users to be unknown, and their profiles won't be merged when you call the Merge Users API endpoint.

• Data management settings. When the SDKs replay locally saved visitor data to an unknown or known user profile, Iterable does not override your project's Data Schema Management settings. If the SDK attempts to save a custom event that your project is configured to drop, the event won't be saved.

• Data retention. When using Unknown User Activation, data is retained as follows:

  • Locally stored visitor data is retained according to your app's or browser's local storage policies.
  • Unknown user profiles in Iterable are subject to your project's data retention settings.
  • When unknown user profiles are merged with known user profiles, the data retention policy of the known user profile applies.

# Supported SDKs

Iterable's iOS, Android, and Web SDKs support Unknown User Activation. These SDKs automatically:

• Fetch profile creation criteria from your Iterable project, so that unknown user profiles can be created for unidentified users as needed.
• Capture client-side events and user profile data about unidentified users of your app or website.
• Create unknown user profiles for users who satisfy the profile creation criteria you've defined in Iterable and add any locally-saved data about them to their unknown user profile in Iterable.
• Merge unknown profiles into known profiles when an unknown user logs into an existing account.

The current supported SDK versions are:

• iOS SDK version 6.6.0
• Android SDK version 3.6.0
• Web SDK version 2.2.0

Right now, Unknown User Activation only works with Iterable's SDKs. In the future, Iterable might support custom implementations for the feature if you aren't using the SDKs.

# Unknown user system webhook

You can use unknownSession events to trigger system webhooks. To do this, go to Integrations > System Webhooks in your Iterable project. When creating the webhook, choose to trigger it on Unknown Session (under Other).

# Other Considerations

When using Unknown User Activation, consider the following:

# Privacy and compliance

• Ensure you have proper user consent mechanisms in place before tracking local data.
• Consider your privacy policy and data handling practices.
• Be aware of regional privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, etc.) and ensure compliance.

# Performance considerations

• Local storage has size limitations that vary by platform.
• The eventThresholdLimit setting helps manage local storage usage.
• Consider the impact of data replay operations on your Iterable project's rate limits.

# Testing

• Test your implementation thoroughly in development environments.
• Verify that profile creation criteria work as expected.
• Test user identification and profile merging scenarios.
• Monitor system webhooks and API calls during testing.

For additional guidance on implementation best practices, contact your Iterable customer success manager.

# Next steps

See the Unknown User Activation Developer Docs for more information about how to set up Unknown User Activation in your Iterable project.

See Planning for Unknown Users if you're a marketer who's planning to use Unknown User Activation in your Iterable project.