# Visitor browsing and activity history

Review a visitor's recorded pages and activity alongside conversation and purchase milestones.

*Release 3.3 · admin, developer, operator, supervisor*

**Settings › General Settings › Admin**

## 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

1. Open the visitor's history to retrieve the newest available activity.
2. Review page entries alongside conversation and sale milestones.
3. 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, on request | 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

### This feature uses

- **Requires** [Visitor identity](VIS-001.md): Recorded history is associated with a visitor identity.
- **Configured in** [Personal data retention and automatic deletion](SEC-021.md): Scheduled personal-data retention controls removal of eligible retained visitor information.
- **Configured in** [Cookie consent and opting out](VIS-018.md): Cookie mode controls whether normal visitor state is saved and restored.
- **Configured in** [Traffic Optimizer for visitor tracking](VIS-019.md): Tracking admission and overload protection affect which page views reach history.
- **Works better with** [Starting, ending and expiring chats](CHAT-001.md): Conversation starts and ends add milestones to the visitor activity timeline.
- **Works better with** [Purchase details and conversion credit](COM-030.md): Recorded purchases contribute sale entries to the timeline.
- **Works better with** [Contact merge preview and assignment](CRM-004.md): Linked visitor identities extend the browsing and conversation timeline.
- **Works better with** [Visitor page and product tracking](VIS-003.md): Page tracking adds browsing entries to a timeline that can also contain conversations and purchases.
- **Works better with** [Video Feed for visitors](VX-025.md): Completed video-feed views can appear in the visitor timeline.
- **Related** [Conversation history and search](CHAT-024.md): Open conversation history to read the transcripts behind conversation milestones in the activity timeline.

### Used by

- **Configures** [Visitor page and product tracking](VIS-003.md): History persistence and retention determine the browsing records available later.
- **Enhances** [Visitor and conversation information panels](CON-017.md): 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.