Visitor browsing and activity history
Review a visitor's recorded pages and activity alongside conversation and purchase milestones.
What it is
Browsing History shows the pages and supported activity INSIDE has recorded for a visitor. The timeline can include conversation starts and ends, purchases and completed video views. It helps you understand what a customer did before you engage with them.
Who uses it and why
Operators and supervisors review earlier activity to understand the customer's context. Administrators and developers check tracking coverage and ask Powerfront about the storage windows used by their account.
Where to find it
Open a visitor's History panel. In the mobile visitor details, the screen is labelled Browsing History. Conversation transcripts are available through the separate conversation history controls.
How it works
- Open the visitor's history to retrieve the newest available activity.
- Review page entries alongside conversation and sale milestones.
- Load older entries as needed. Normal timeline requests return up to 50 entries at a time, newest first.
Where customer identities are linked, page, conversation and purchase history can include those linked visitors. Completed video-feed entries are retrieved for the selected visitor.
INSIDE also keeps visitor information that allows a recognised browser to return to its stored state. That information and the individual page-history entries have separate storage lifetimes.
Configure it
Ask Powerfront to confirm your browsing-history retention. The default page-history storage window is six months, but the deployed configuration can differ. Identity-change history has a separate six-month default.
Powerfront can change Personal Data Retention Period (days) for you. Its default of zero disables that automatic personal-data deletion rule. It does not disable the separate cleanup of old browsing history.
Settings
| Setting | Where | Applies to | Default | Who can change it | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Data Retention Period (days) | Settings › General Settings › Admin | website | 0 days; automatic personal-data deletion disabled | Powerfront | Sets the personal-data retention period, separately from browsing-history storage windows. |
Limits and good to know
- A recognised returning visitor does not imply that all their earlier page history is still retained.
- Missing entries can result from tracking exclusions, overload protection or retention.
- Search views can apply different date and result limits from the normal timeline.
- Page titles, addresses and images are not guaranteed to be an unchanged copy of what the visitor saw at the time.
- The activity timeline is not a complete conversation transcript or a substitute for a personal-data export.
Depends on and works with
+2 more · this feature uses
- Traffic Optimizer for visitor trackingConfigured by
Tracking admission and overload protection affect which page views reach history.
- Video Feed for visitorsEnhances
Completed video-feed views can appear in the visitor timeline.
View all connections as a list
This feature uses
- Starting, ending and expiring chatsEnhances
Conversation starts and ends add milestones to the visitor activity timeline.
- Conversation history and searchRelated
Open conversation history to read the transcripts behind conversation milestones in the activity timeline.
- Purchase details and conversion creditEnhances
Recorded purchases contribute sale entries to the timeline.
- Contact merge preview and assignmentEnhances
Linked visitor identities extend the browsing and conversation timeline.
- Personal data retention and automatic deletionConfigured by
Scheduled personal-data retention controls removal of eligible retained visitor information.
- Visitor identityRequires
Recorded history is associated with a visitor identity.
- Visitor page and product trackingEnhances
Page tracking adds browsing entries to a timeline that can also contain conversations and purchases.
- Cookie consent and opting outConfigured by
Cookie mode controls whether normal visitor state is saved and restored.
- Traffic Optimizer for visitor trackingConfigured by
Tracking admission and overload protection affect which page views reach history.
- Video Feed for visitorsEnhances
Completed video-feed views can appear in the visitor timeline.
Used by
- Visitor page and product trackingConfigured by
History persistence and retention determine the browsing records available later.
- Visitor and conversation information panelsEnhances
Retained visit history supplies earlier browsing context.
FAQ and troubleshooting
Why does the visitor still exist but their older pages do not?
Visitor recognition and page history have different storage lifetimes.
Does a zero personal-data retention setting keep all history forever?
No. Zero disables that personal-data deletion rule. Browsing-history storage cleanup is separate.
Why does history include another visitor's activity?
Linked customer identities can contribute pages, conversations and purchases to the same timeline.
Why are only recent entries shown at first?
The normal timeline loads up to 50 entries per request. Load older activity to continue through the available history.