Identity Stitching
Identity Stitching is a feature that allows you to attribute all events received from an anonymous user to a known user after logging in.
Jitsu retroactively updates anonymous events in supported destinations with user traits.
Identity Stitching relies on Deduplication feature and is available for the following destinations:
How it works
For each unidentified user Jitsu client library generates a unique anonymous ID and tries to store it in browser's cookies (If cookies consent was granted).
If it is allowed to store anonymous ID, Jitsu client will add anonymousId field to all events produced with that.
Jitsu server uses separate intermediate storage to keep the last 30 days of events for each anonymous user.
When identify method is called Jitsu client adds userId field and traits to the events while keeping anonymousId in place.
Jitsu server loads all events for that anonymousId from storage, enriches them with userId field and user traits, and sends them to the destination.
Thanks to the Deduplication feature, instead of producing duplicated events, Jitsu will update existing events with enriched data.
Example
Let's say we have a website with a following events flow:
Anonymous user had some activity on the website at Jan 1, then 23 days later he decided to signed up.
Without Identity Stitching, we could have the following table in a data warehouse:
| timestamp | type | path | anonymous_id | user_id | context_traits_email |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-01 00:00:00 | page | /shop | abc123 | ||
| 2023-01-01 00:01:00 | page | /order | abc123 | ||
| 2023-01-23 00:00:00 | page | /signup | abc123 | ||
| 2023-01-23 00:01:00 | identify | /signup | abc123 | 1001 | test@example.com |
With Identity Stitching, Jitsu will reprocess events with anonymous_id=abc123 and we will have the following table:
| timestamp | type | path | anonymous_id | user_id | context_traits_email |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-01 00:00:00 | page | /shop | abc123 | 1001 | test@example.com |
| 2023-01-01 00:01:00 | page | /order | abc123 | 1001 | test@example.com |
| 2023-01-23 00:00:00 | page | /signup | abc123 | 1001 | test@example.com |
| 2023-01-23 00:01:00 | identify | /signup | abc123 | 1001 | test@example.com |
How to enable
You can enable Identity Stitching on the Connection editing page in the Advanced section:
(For a self-hosted Jitsu, there are additional requirements. )
