Conversations | Merging temporary and authenticated accounts
Purpose
This article specifies the merging mechanism between temporay accounts and external client accounts.
a temporary account is created for an anonymous visitor, who only identifies himself through a username and sometimes his email address (which is not verified in this case)
a client account is an authenticated user. His data is collected from the Brand’s account, and his credentials rely on the Brand’s authentication system.
Please refer to Data Protection Guide for detailed specifications of external users' accounts.
Which scenarios are concerned ?
This article applies to Popsell Widgets embedded on a brand's website.
As of version 4.4, only the conversational widgets enable interactions with temporary accounts. All other widgets (publication widget, profile widget) require an authenticated account.
The data concerned are those of the conversations: chat messages and images uploaded.
Case 0 : User logged-in to his Brand account
This case does not need to merge accounts : Popsell account is linked to the Brand account, all interaction data is saved and bound to this account.
Case 1 : No brand account / No Popsell account
Initial status
The user does not have a Brand account on its website
The user never had interaction with a Popsell widget
User journey
The user interacts with the community widget, as a temporary user : he leaves a username and eventually his email address.
He chats with a Member
He then creates an account on the Brand website
The existing temporary account is updated to be a client account
→ all chat history is preserved
If the user had specified an email address as a temporary user, and this email is different from the one of his Brand account, then it will be replaced by the Brand account.
Currently, the temporary account is updated to become a client account. In future releases, this behaviour might evolve to be similar to that of case 3 : both accounts might be kept and linked together.
Case 2 : Existing Brand account / No Popsell account
Initial status
The user has a Brand account but not logged-in
The user never had interaction with a Popsell Widget
User journey
The user interacts with the community widget, as a temporary user : he leaves a username and eventually his email address.
He chats with a Member
He then logs-in to his account on the Brand website
→ same behaviour as case 1
Case 3 : Existing Brand account / Existing Popsell client account
Initial status
The user has a brand account, but not logged-in
The user has a Popsell client, linked to his Brand account, due to previous interactions with Popsell widgets.
User journey
The user interacts with the community widget, as a temporary user (for example not logged in because using another device).
He chats with a Member
He then logs-in to his account on the Brand website
Current version behaviour:
The user retrieves his past conversation history bound to his authenticated account, if any.
His last conversation messages exchanged as a temporary user are lost.
If the user does not pursue the conversation after logging-in and places an order, the order is not attributed to the Member (see notes in the collapsed section below).
Update planned in version 4.8 (Q2 2024):
→ Both accounts (temporary and authenticated) are bound.
→ This enables to track an order placed after the user logged-in, and to make the attribution to the Member
→ No changes in the UX, the messages exchanged with a temporary account are lost.
Update planned in a later version (H2 2024):
→ All his past conversational data bound to his authenticated account is kept in the original chatroom.
→ The recent conversational data bound to his temporary account is kept, and once logged-in, the conversation is continued in this last chatroom.
→ The user will see two separate chatrooms in his chat history, and he will be able to chat in either one. All chat history is preserved.
→ The Member will also see two separate chatrooms in his chat history.
→ If the user later engages a direct conversation with the Member, the chatroom with the most recent message will be opened.