Persisting user data on custom response paths?

#1

I’m primarily using the web messenger, which I understand doesn’t persist user data. So if a user clears their browser data, that chat / response path is no longer accessible.

  1. Would it be possible to use a custom response path to work around this limitation? For example, a user id generated my own app would have the benefit of remaining the same no matter what. Even if the chat history is erased, presumably, I could start a chat, send the user id as metadata, and recover the old attributes. Do I understand the mechanics correctly?

  2. Is it advisable to mix response paths? That is, keeping most of the chat events on the default response path, but using the custom “user id path” as the persistent data store? Or might it be better to move everything to the custom path?

(Daniel Beckett) #2

If you save user information / attributes to something like Google Sheets or mySQL then you could also keep a record of the user’s ID from your app. This would let you know who the customer is even if their response path changes.

I think this is more of a terminology problem but just to clarify you can’t really generate a custom response path since the only way your bots can route messages back to the users is through the response path generated for their platform, which as you’ve mentioned is lost in the web messenger when the cache is cleared.

Still, I think you’ve got the right kind of idea here - provide a unique identifier to the customer that you can query later to retrieve information about them.