Interact API dataflow

This example shows how the API works between your touchpoint and the runtime environment. The visitor takes only four actions - log in, navigate to page that displays offers, select an offer, and log out. You can design your integration to be as complicated as you need, within the limits of your performance requirements.

This diagram shows a simple implementation of the Interact API.

A visitor logs in to a website and navigates to a page that displays offers. The visitor selects an offer and logs out. While the interaction is simple, several events occur both in the touchpoint and the runtime server:
  1. Starting a session
  2. Navigating to a page
  3. Selecting an offer
  4. Closing the session

Diagram showing simple implementation of the Interact API dataflow

Starting the session

When the visitor logs in, it triggers a startSession.

The startSession method does four things:
  1. It creates a new runtime session
  2. It sends a request to load the customer profile data into the session
  3. It sends a request to use the profile data and start an interactive flowchart to place the customer into segments. This flowchart run is asynchronous.
  4. The runtime server loads any offer suppression and global and individual offer treatment information into the session. The session data is held in memory during the session.

Navigating to a page

The visitor navigates the site until the visitor reaches a pre-defined interaction point. In the figure, the second interaction point (Select choice) is a place where the visitor clicks a link that presents a set of offers. The touchpoint manager configured the link to trigger an executeBatch method for selecting an offer.

Selecting an offer

This diagram shows the API call that triggers the executeBatch method.


Diagram of the API call that trigger the executeBatch method

The executeBatch method lets you call more than one method in a single call to the runtime server. This particular executeBatch calls two other methods, getOffers and postEvent. The getOffers method requests a list of offers. The runtime server uses the segmentation data, the offer suppression list, the treatment rules, and the learning module to propose a set of offers. The runtime server returns a set of offers that are displayed on the content page.

The postEvent method triggers one of the events that are defined in the design environment. In this particular case, the event sends a request to log the offers that are presented to contact history.

The visitor selects one of the offers (Pick offer).

This diagram shows the postEvent method.


Diagram showing the postEvent method

The user interface control that is associated with selecting the offer is configured to send another postEvent method. This event sends a request to log the offer acceptance to response history.

Closing the session

After the visitor selects the offer, the visitor is finished with the website and logs out. The log out command is linked to the endSession method.

This diagram shows the endSession method.


Diagram showing the end of the API workflow (the endSession method)

The endSession method closes the session. If the visitor forgets to log out, there is a configurable session timeout to ensure that all sessions eventually end. If you want to keep any of the data passed to the session, such as information included in parameters in the startSession or setAudience methods, work with the person who creates interactive flowcharts. The person who creates an interactive flowchart can use the Snapshot process to write that data to a database before the session ends and that data is lost. You can then use the postEvent method to call the interactive flowchart that contains the Snapshot process.