Sessions

This section describes how Uniform handles session management.

Session timeout

The Uniform tracker handles session timeout, but does so a little differently than standard Sitecore.

Session timeout is configured in Sitecore. The default timeout is 20 minutes.

The following example explains how session timeout works:

1. Visitor views the site for the first time.
2. Uniform tracker creates a new visit.
3. Uniform tracker captures a page view activity.
4. 2 minutes later the visitor views another page.
5. Uniform tracker determines the amount of time between the last time the visit was updated and now. In this case, the difference is 2 minutes.
6. Since 2 minutes is less than the session timeout setting, the activity is added to the current visit.
7. 30 minutes later the visitor views another page.
8. Uniform tracker determines the amount of time between the last time the visit was updated and now. In this case, the difference is 30 minutes.
9. Since 30 minutes is greater than the session timeout setting, the current visit is set to have ended 30 minutes ago (i.e. at the time that the visit was last updated).
10. A new visit is created.
11. The page view activity is associated with the new visit.

Session end

Version note

This feature is available in version 5.1+.

When the visitor closes their browser, the current visit ends. The following example explains how this happens:

1. Visitor views the site for the first time.
2. Uniform tracker creates a new visit.
3. Uniform tracker sets a cookie to store the current visit id.
4. Visitor closes the browser.
5. Browser deletes the visit id cookie.
6. Visitor immediately returns to the site.
7. Uniform tracker finds no visit id cookie.
8. Uniform tracker finds all the visits that are still active (i.e. have not ended).
9. Uniform tracker sets the end does for these visits to match the date/time of the last activity captured for the visit.
10. Uniform tracker creates a new visit.
11. Uniform tracker sets the visit id cookie.