[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 v4.4 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

• → 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 : 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