Solved

heap.identify having no effect


Badge +1

Greetings,

I’m having no problems setting user properties with addUserProperties, however the unique string I’m sending to heap.identify never shows up within my data on the “Users & Sessions” page.

Here is the code I’m using:

heap.identify(‘acb12345uniqueid’);
heap.addUserProperties({'name': ‘Joe’});
 

Has anyone else ever run into this issue?

 

Thanks so much,

Nic

icon

Best answer by Nora-Heap 16 February 2023, 17:52

View original

This topic has been closed for comments

21 replies

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Hey Nic! 

First, a small note that may or may not be relevant to your tests: there’s a mix of curly and straight quotation marks in the API calls you pasted above. That may be caused by the editor in our community forum or from copying to some text editor before posting here. Only ever use straight quotation marks otherwise the API call might error out because the string argument may not be parsed properly as a string. 

Unlike user properties, seeing the identity appear in Heap can sometimes take 30-60 minutes after the identify call fires because of the processing involved to merge or migrate the user’s historical, anonymous data to the right identity. For this reason, the user migration service has some normal amount of latency which means seeing the identity in Heap is not instantaneous, unfortunately. If you check back in Heap now, does your identity appear, or is it still not present? 

A quick and immediate way to check you are getting identified properly is to do a quick test in your browser where you are testing. It requires some familiarity with browser dev tools. Here are the steps to do a quick check:

  1. If you open the dev tools console tab (cmd + opt + j on macs)
  2. Type and enter “heap.identity” in the console

You will see your identifier if you are currently identified in that session. Example:

  •  

If you are not identified (anonymous), heap.identity will return null. Example: 

Happy to troubleshoot further with you if needed! 

Badge +1

Thank you so much for the reply.  Yes, the editor seems to swap the quotation mark style - I verified that I’m using straight single quotation marks

I implemented the identify call yesterday and am still not seeing any of the data come through.  Appreciate the tip to check in the console and I am seeing the data there:

However in “Users and Sessions” I only see the data sent via addUserProperties:

 

Not sure if it is helpful, but I manually ran heap.identify(‘somerandomstring’) in the console and it seem to split the session data in “Users and Sessions” into two different users both labeled as unidentified.

Thanks again for your time and help!

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Thanks for running those checks and confirming the details! The root of the issue was caused by some additional latency from creating the identity property in the account. It had nothing to do with the way you were calling identity or the identity values you were passing. Sorry for the delay and confusion! 

It should be all fixed now and you should be able to see identities in the account now. 

 

Badge +1

Awesome - thanks again for your time and tracking this down!

Userlevel 1
Badge

@Nora-Heap Hi, I have been facing the same issue. Integrated heap.identify in my code on Friday (10th Feb). I see the identity being passed with the API calls to heap as the parameter ‘i’ on Network tab and running “heap.identity” on the console also outputs the expected id. However on Heap, I do not see the identity being associated with any user record, exactly like the Users and Sessions screenshot shared by the author of this post.

 

Your help is appreciated. Thanks.

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

@Nora-Heap Hi, I am having the exact same issue, I have done all the checks above and the identity is correctly set and sent via your scripts.

Still no identity displayed after a few hours.

 

Help would be appreciated.

Cheers

Marc

Badge

Greetings,
unique string I’m sending to window.heap.identify never shows up within my data on the “Users & Sessions” page.
Here is the code I’m using:
window.heap.identify(‘acb12345uniqueid’);

window.heap.identify(‘1648380’);

nothing is working!!!!!

Has anyone else ever run into this issue?

Thanks so much,

Badge

@Nora-Heap I am facing the same issue. I verified that I have the identity in my console but its not showing on the dashboard. Do I have to delete the user somehow and do the process again? Kindly advice. Thanks

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Hey everyone,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We are investigating this latency issue with the identity property creation internally and are working to resolve it as soon as possible. Once resolved I will update you all by posting to this thread.

Thank you for your patience!

Best,

Nora

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Here with an update!! Our engineering team is aware of this issue and actively investigating long-term solutions. In the meantime, I’ve deployed a workaround fix for everyone who posted in this thread—you should all see the identity property in your accounts now.

Please note the issue is ongoing and may cause some additional latency with other custom user properties appearing in Heap. To be clear, the data is all being captured and there is no data loss, it is instead a latency issue with the property names (or keys) appearing in Heap. Our engineering team is on the case! :)  

Badge

Hi @Nora-Heap . Thanks for the reply. I changed my environment  and started on the new environment. But I cant see the list of users on this page https://heapanalytics.com/app/env/2497273445/users-and-sessions. Even when it shows on the dashboard that I have one user

 

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Know that environments don’t share any data, so when you switch environments you start over with a new dataset of users. I wouldn’t recommend spinning off a new environment unless you need separate datasets.

I’ve deployed the workaround to the new environment. Please note any environments you spin up in the meantime will have this issue and that is currently expected. Thank you for your patience as our eng team works on a solution!

Badge

@Nora-Heap Hi~ i just integrated heap and i’m facing the same issue, can you also help solving my case? Thanks!!

Badge

Hi @Nora-Heap, I’m also facing the same issue on 2 environments

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

@rodrigoatsquid The first environment was already fixed when I checked it, please double-check you see that as well! I did the workaround on the second environment ID you shared. 

@Icy can you open a direct message with me and send me your Heap account’s ID? You can find that in the Account > Manage > Projects section and click on your project listed. The IDs will appear on the right side tab.  

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

@Icy no need to send me your account details anymore. The issue should be fixed now!  

Moving forward our engineering team has marked this incident as resolved.

Here’s our status page for reference: https://status.heap.io/ 

Badge

@Nora-Heap we are still experiencing this issue. Is there a potential that this is still a problem?

Userlevel 3
Badge +3

@Nora-Heap we are still experiencing this issue. Is there a potential that this is still a problem?

Hi @kpittioni, are you still experiencing latency? 

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

@kpittioni just ran a quick check of your account and things look resolved from our end—the identity property has appeared. If any issues remain please start a new post and feel free to tag me in it (please don’t tag me in all new posts, just this one time 😅) !  

Userlevel 1
Badge +1

Hello @Nora-Heap  I’m joining the conversation as we’re also experiencing the same issue. We have 2 environments (dev and prod) when I tested on Dev the identity is working and showing. However when it comes to prod, the identity is not showing. We did test the console and it seems to work.  

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Hey @Djon I just checked your account and I see identity appearing in production. It appears there was some latency that resolved itself. The incident mentioned earlier in this thread has now been resolved.