Identity resolution

Identity rules

Identity rules define which identifying information SitecoreAI uses to recognize and match site visitor identities.

Note the following about identity rules:

By default, SitecoreAI environments have no identity rules configured.
Each environment can have a maximum of five identity rules.
Most environments use one identity rule, and a few use two.
Setting up identity rules is typically a one-time configuration task.
The most common implementation uses a single rule for matching identities based on email addresses.

Note

Identity rules are configured per SitecoreAI environment and are based on your organization's unique requirements. We recommend you consult with your data privacy team and other stakeholders to determine your organization's identity rules before you start configuring them.

Identifier providers

Every identity rule consists of a descriptive name such as Email address, and an identifier provider such as email. The identifier provider must match the identifiers.provider value in the IDENTITY events that your organization sends to SitecoreAI. If the values don't match, SitecoreAI cannot evaluate the identity rule.

Consider the following example IDENTITY event payload, which uses email addresses to identify visitors:

"identifiers": [
  {
    "id": "[email protected]",
    "provider": "email"
  }
],
// ... Rest of IDENTITY event data

In the payload, the identifiers.provider value is set to email. To perform identity resolution for this IDENTITY event, you must create an identity rule and set its identifier provider to email, making sure the two values match.

Profile types

SitecoreAI automatically creates a profile and a profile ID for every site visitor. Each profile has one of the following types:

Visitor - created automatically for every new site visitor. This is the initial profile type for all new visitors.
Identified - a profile that contains identifying information captured in an IDENTITY event.
Retired - a duplicate profile that has been merged into another profile and is no longer active. Retired profiles do not appear in the Profiles user interface.

Without identity resolution, all profiles remain in the visitor type. With identity resolution configured, profiles can move to the identified type.

Evaluating identity rules

SitecoreAI resolves identities by evaluating the identity rules configured in your environment.

Single identity rule

When your environment has a single identity rule, SitecoreAI applies that rule to all incoming IDENTITY events.

Consider an environment that has one identity rule configured, with the identifier provider set to email. When an IDENTITY event with identifiers.provider set to email is captured, SitecoreAI searches for existing profiles with the same email address. The outcome depends on whether a matching profile is found.

No match found - the profile changes from type visitor to type identified and now contains the identifying information from the IDENTITY event.
Match found - SitecoreAI merges the session data from the visitor profile into the matched identified profile, and the visitor profile changes to type retired.

Multiple identity rules

When your environment has multiple identity rules, SitecoreAI evaluates them in order, starting with the rule at the top of the identity rules list, until a match is found or all rules are evaluated.

Consider an environment that has two rules configured in the following order:

email - for resolving identities using email addresses.
phone - for resolving identities using phone numbers.

When an IDENTITY event with identifiers.provider set to phone is captured, the following happens:

SitecoreAI evaluates the first rule (email) but cannot perform matching because the IDENTITY event contains phone, not email.
SitecoreAI proceeds to evaluate the second rule (phone) and searches for existing profiles with the same phone number. The outcome depends on whether a matching profile is found.
- No match found - the profile changes from type visitor to type identified and now contains the identifying information from the IDENTITY event.
- Match found - SitecoreAI merges the session data from the visitor profile into the matched identified profile, and the visitor profile changes to type retired.

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