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Filtering out company users from results

  • 5 June 2023
  • 5 replies
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M
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We are a web-based hybrid app and don’t have a tone of users. Using the app does not require creating an account (but you can). We are using Heap Identify.

People in the company frequently use the app to test different features, or check on its functionality. This frequently involves reinstalling the app and using it as a “fresh” user without creating an account.

I’d like to be able to create a segment that combines all our company members’ devices so that the data points generated by them can be filtered out from the dashboards.

Is there a way to do it? 

Current thinking: I know Heap creates a unique User ID, but afaiu, this only persists across sessions but not across devices and not in a case when the user reinstalls the app. Are there other ways to approach it, e.g. by registering test devices, or sth else?

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Best answer by marta_mindease 12 July 2023, 13:07

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julia
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Hi @marta_mindease , would filtering out certain IPs work? Here’s an article: How do I get Heap to ignore data from certain IP addresses?

M
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Thanks for pointing it out! This in principle seems like an ok solution, however in our case doesn’t seem to satisfy what I want to achieve, because our team is remote. :(

This means team members will be using the app at different local and public networks (different among each other, and different depending where they work form on a given day). 

As far as I understand IP addresses assigned to devices are not always (or rather, they are usually not) unique (even on local networks), which means it’ll be impossible to determine all IP addresses for exclusion.

So, even if the team member’s location was somewhat predictable (say: most of the time they work from home) it doesn’t seem to solve the problem.

Now that I think about it more the question seems to come down to:

🙋‍♀️ Does anyone know if it’s possible to exclude from Heap data based on the user’s device IS (Vendor ID (iOS)/ Android ID)?

[edited] Or... how can Heap Identify be used for that purpose?

Christy H
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Hey @marta_mindease, I showcased the way to use Identity/Email to filter out employees in another post. But it doesn't sound like this solution work for you given that employees aren't logging in when they create these fresh accounts.

M
Userlevel 1
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Thanks! Yes, I was initially thinking Identify should be THE solution for it, but indeed if each time they:

  • try the app as new users
  • not log in to previous accounts, and 
  • not even create an account (cos it’s not a requirement, if it was we’d just use some @mailinator or such email address and filter those out).

then there seems to be (? that’s what I’m trying to verify) nothing persistent to identify them, other than some way to identify their device. In, e.g. AppsFlyer it’s possible to register specific devices as testing devices (but this is a mobile specific solution).

I was wondering if there is a way of doing sth similar in Heap. Maybe that device ID gets captured somewhere anyway (but I doubt that cos that’s a level of unique identification more invasive than fingerprinting, right?)

M
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For those interested: we solved it by creating a boolean a user attribute isTestUser. It gets set to True if the username (shared in the Onboarding) includes string test.

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