Accounts | 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 an ambassador
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 he specified on his Brand account, then it will be lost and replaced.
If the user had specified an email address as a temporary user different from the one of his Brand account, then it will be replaced by the Brand account.
Note: a different behaviour was implemented in versions 4.4 to 4.6.1 / It has been Deprecated since v4.6.2 to avoid order tracking loss:
→ if the user had specified an email address as a temporary user, and this email is different from the one he specified on his Brand account, then no merging is made
a new Popsell account is created and linked to his Brand account
all chat history is lost
→ else (no email was specified, or same email as the one used on the brand account)
the existing temporary account is updated to be a client account
all chat history is preserved
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 an ambassador
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 an ambassador
He then logs-in to his account on the Brand website
→ All his past conversational data bound to his brand account is retrieved
→ The temporary conversational data made during this session is retrieved in the following conditions:
if he/she never talked to this ambassador previously, then all the current temporary conversation is bound to his/her brand account.
if he/she already talked to this ambassador in the past, then messages of the past X(*) days of the temporary conversation are duplicated and merged into the previous conversation that was bound to his/her brand account. (*)
(*) X is the timeframe for attributing sales to conversations, usually 7 or 14 days depending on the brand's preferences.
Merging these messages will ensure that there is no loss of order attribution.
Messages older than X days are not merged, to avoid updating and distorting the data in the dashboards before this period.
Data in the temporary conversation is also kept to changing and downdegrading conversation data in dashboards
Note: a different behaviour was implemented in versions 4.4 to 4.6.1 / It has been Deprecated since v4.6.2 to avoid order tracking loss and to enable to pursue conversations while login in in the middle of a conversation.
This was the previous behaviour:
The user interacts with the community widget, as a temporary user : he leaves a username and eventually his email address.
He chats with an ambassador
He then logs-in to his account on the Brand website
→ All his past conversational data bound to his account is retrieved
→ All the temporary conversational data made in this session is lost