Session tracking for iOS

The Braze SDK reports session data used by the Braze dashboard to calculate user engagement and other analytics integral to understanding your users. Our SDK generates “start session” and “close session” data points that account for session length and session count viewable within the Braze dashboard based on the following session semantics.

Session lifecycle

A session is started when you call [[Appboy sharedInstance] startWithApiKey:inApplication:withLaunchOptions:withAppboyOptions], after which by default sessions start when the UIApplicationWillEnterForegroundNotification notification is fired (such as the app enters the foreground) and end when the app leaves the foreground (such as when the UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification notification is fired or when the app dies).

Customizing session timeout

Starting with Braze iOS SDK v3.14.1, you can set the session timeout using the Info.plist file. Add the Braze dictionary to your Info.plist file. Inside the Braze dictionary, add the SessionTimeout number subentry and set the value to your custom session timeout. Note that prior to Braze iOS SDK v4.0.2, the dictionary key Appboy must be used in place of Braze.

You may alternatively set the ABKSessionTimeoutKey key to the desired integer value in your appboyOptions object passed to startWithApiKey.

• objective-c
• swift

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// Sets the session timeout to 60 seconds
[Appboy startWithApiKey:@"YOUR-API_KEY"
          inApplication:application
      withLaunchOptions:options
      withAppboyOptions:@{ ABKSessionTimeoutKey : @(60) }];

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// Sets the session timeout to 60 seconds
Appboy.start(withApiKey: "YOUR-API-KEY",
                 in:application,
                 withLaunchOptions:launchOptions,
                 withAppboyOptions:[ ABKSessionTimeoutKey : 60 ])

If you have set a session timeout, then the session semantics all extend to that customized timeout.

Testing session tracking

To detect sessions via your user, find your user on the dashboard and navigate to App Usage on the user profile. You can confirm that session tracking is working by checking that the “Sessions” metric increases when you expect it to.