How Unica Interact processes event pattern states and statuses

Event patterns respond to a visitor's interactive session with the runtime environment by updating their states and statuses and passing them to the runtime environment for processing.

Unica Interact loads, tracks, and stores event pattern information:

  • At the start of the session, Unica Interact tries to load any previous event pattern states that are associated with the current visitor's audience identifier, if event pattern states exist.
  • During the session, as an event is posted, Unica Interact updates the states and statuses of any event patterns that use the event. If an event pattern is used during the session, such as during execution of an interactive flowchart, the status of the event pattern is retrieved and updated.
  • At the end of the session, the statuses are either stored or discarded. If the audience identifier is found in the profile data source, the statuses of all the updated event patterns that are associated with the visitor's audience identifier are stored. Otherwise, the event pattern states are discarded.

Store states for unknown audience identifiers

The event pattern states for unknown users are discarded by default at the end of the session. To change the default, set one of these values to TRUE:
  • Configuration property interact | services | eventPattern | persistUnknownUserStates
  • Session parameter UACISavePatternStates

When the audience identifier changes in a session

If the audience identifier changes in the middle of a session, Unica Interact tries to load the saved event pattern states for the new audience identifier.

In some situations, the audience identifier changes during the session from unknown to known. For example, a person enters a website, adds items to the cart, then logs in to place the order. In these cases, the event activities that belong to the initial audience identifier can be merged into the event activities that belong to the new audience identifier. To merge the statuses, one of these values must be set to TRUE:
  • Configuration property interact | services | eventPattern | persistUnknownUserStates
  • Session parameter UACISavePatternStates

Event pattern states and statues are session independent

Event pattern states and statuses are stored by the visitor's audience identifier. Event activities from one user session are reflected in another session, when the audience identifier matches and both sessions are active when those events occur.