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Identify people

You need to identify a person using a mobile device before you can send them messages or track events for things they do in your app.

Identify a person

Identifying a person:

1. Adds or updates the person in your workspace. This is basically the same as an identify call to our server-side API.

2. Saves the person’s information on the device. Future calls to the SDK reference the identified person. For example, after you identify a person, any events that you track are automatically associated with that person.

3. Associates the current device token with the the person.

You can only identify one customer at a time. The SDK “remembers” the most recently-identified customer. If you identify person A, and then call the identify function for person B, the SDK “forgets” person A and assumes that person B is the current app user. You can also stop identifying a person, which you might do when someone logs off or stops using your app for a significant period of time.

An identify request takes the following parameters:

• userId (required): The unique value representing a person—an ID or email address that represents a person in Customer.io (and your downstream destinations).
• traits (Optional): Contains attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages. Attributes are analogous to traits in Data Pipelines. that you want to set for a person. The traits object accepts strings, enums, primitives (int, float, char, etc.), their boxed counterparts (Integer, Float, Character, etc.), arrays, collections, lists, sets, and maps.

We also offer a Kotlin serialization library that can help make it easier to set keys and values for the traits object.

CustomerIO.instance().identify("USER_ID", buildJsonObject {
    put("username", "MisterWhiskers")
    put("email", "mister.whiskers@example.com")
    put("plan", "premiumCatFood")
});

CustomerIO.instance()
  .identify(
    userId = "USER_ID",
    traits = mapOf("first_name" to "firstName")
  )

Update a person’s attributes

You store information about a person in Customer.io as attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages. Attributes are analogous to traits in Data Pipelines.. When you call the identify() function, you can update a person’s attributes on the server-side.

If a person is already identified, and then updates their preferences, provides additional information about themselves, or performs other attribute-changing actions, you can update their attributes with profileAttributes.

CustomerIO.profileAttributes = ["favorite_food": "pizza"]

You only need to pass the attributes that you want to set. For example, if you identify a new person with the attribute "first_name": "Dana", and then you call CustomerIO.profileAttributes = ["favorite_food": "pizza"], the person’s first_name attribute will still be Dana. And Dana will now have a favorite_food attribute with the value pizza.

Device attributes

By default (if you don’t set .autoTrackDeviceAttributes(false) in your config), the SDK automatically collects a series of attributesA key-value pair that you associate with a person or an object—like a person’s name, the date they were created in your workspace, or a company’s billing date etc. Use attributes to target people and personalize messages. Attributes are analogous to traits in Data Pipelines. for each device. You can use these attributes in segmentsA group of people who match a series of conditions. People enter and exit the segment automatically when they match or stop matching conditions. and other campaign workflow conditions to target the device owner, just like you would use a person’s other attributes. You cannot, however, use device attributes to personalize messages with liquidA syntax that supports variables, letting you personalize messages for your audience. For example, if you want to reference a person’s first name, you might use the variable {{customer.first_name}}. yet.

Along with these attributes, we automatically set a last_used timestamp for each device indicating when the device owner was last identified, and the last_status of a push notification you sent to the device. You can also set your own custom device attributes. You’ll see a person’s devices and each device’s attributes when you go to Journeys > People > Select a person, and click Devices.

Custom device attributes

When we collect device attributes, you can also set custom device attributes with the deviceAttributes method. You might do this to save app preferences, timezone, or other custom values specific to the device.

CustomerIO.instance().deviceAttributes = mapOf("key" to "value")

However, before you set custom device attributes, consider whether the attribute is specific to the device or if it applies to a person more broadly. If you want an attribute to persist beyond the life of the device, you should apply it to the person rather than the device.

Disable automatic device attribute collection

By default, the SDK automatically collects the device attributes defined above. You can change your config to prevent the SDK from automatically collecting these attributes.

// set before you build
builder.autoTrackDeviceAttributes(false)

Stop identifying a person

When a person logs out, or does something else to tell you that they no longer want to be tracked, you should stop identifying them.

Use clearIdentify() to stop identifying the previously identified person (if there was one).

// Future calls to the SDK are anonymous
CustomerIO.instance().clearIdentify()

Identify a different person

If you want to identify a new person—like when someone switches profiles on a streaming app, etc—you can simply call identify() for the new person. The new person then becomes the currently-identified person, with whom all new information—messages, events, etc—is associated.