Plan your browser extension implementation

Planning your extension implementation sets you up for success by helping you to identify and collect the data you need to better understand your visitor behavior across your application portfolios, and to deliver in-app messaging and guidance.

We also have developer documentation that provides the details that engineers need to successfully install using the Pendo Launcher browser extension. For more information, see the IT guide to deploying the Pendo Launcher.

Step 1. Communicate with your internal teams

Involve the relevant teams at your organization as early as possible. You should work with your developer, security team, privacy team, and IT team from beginning to end, including the planning phase of your installation. Early communication with these teams is critical to a successful deployment. 

Before you get started, you and the relevant internal teams at your organization should decide on the following:

Security and privacy policies

Review our security and privacy programs and check that they’re aligned with your own. Your chosen Visitor ID source (Step 2) and metadata (Step 3) must be approved by your security team and must be accessible by your endpoint management tools.

User data and other identifying information can be highly sensitive, but Pendo doesn’t sell or distribute customer data or personally identifiable information (PII) and gives you control over your user data. For more information, see Security and privacy.

Browsers to deploy on

Planning your installation requires that you know which browsers you want to deploy on. You can deploy on one, some, or all of the following browsers:

• Chrome 57 or later
• Microsoft Edge
• Firefox

We recommend deploying on Chrome, which installs easily on both Windows and Mac operating systems and automatically updates. Edge behaves similarly to Chrome.

Regardless of the browser, JavaScript must be enabled. Avoid programs that block JavaScript, like anti-virus software. 

Pendo conducts ongoing validation tests to ensure browser support.

Operating systems to deploy on

As well as browsers, you must plan around which operating systems you want to deploy on. You can follow our instructions to deploy on both Windows and Mac operating systems. Linux deployments are supported. However, we don’t currently have documentation for Linux deployments.

Step 2. Choose Visitor IDs

Pendo displays information at the individual level: visitors. Visitors are individual end-users that you identify with unique Visitor IDs. Visitor IDs are readable names in many analytics and reports, and allow you to follow an individual end-user through their product journey. 

Before installing Pendo with the browser extension, you must decide what to use as a Visitor ID. When making this decision, it’s important that you:

• Have a unique ID for each visitor. Duplicate Visitor IDs are aggregated, with no way to distinguish between visitors that have the same ID.
• Ensure that the team responsible for security and privacy at your company approves the selected Visitor ID source. 
• Select a Visitor ID source that’s available to your IT team’s endpoint management tools. 

You can’t change the Visitor ID without losing product usage and guide history data for users prior to the date the Visitor ID changed. If a Visitor ID value changes after the user has initialized Pendo for the first time and generated a visitor record, a new visitor record is created with new data. You retain all previous analytics with the old Visitor ID with no connection to the new Visitor ID. The new Visitor ID has new first-login data, sees automatic guides that target them again, and restarts any onboarding checklist.

A Visitor ID is a unique identifier for an end-user, and is how you follow the end-user through their product journey. We encourage the use of universally unique identifiers (UUID) for visitor identification. However, you can choose how you configure Visitor IDs. Below are some examples of Visitor IDs.

* You can also choose to provide a hashed version.

You can choose to pull Visitor IDs into Pendo in any of the following ways:

• Browser script injected into an app, including Salesforce.
• Chrome or Edge login.
• Endpoint management tools, including Jamf and GPO.

Anonymous users are also supported with cookies, but we don’t display data from anonymous visitors in analytics and reports by default. To enable anonymous visitor data, see Anonymous visitors.

Step 3. Select metadata

After choosing your Visitor IDs, select the metadata associated with visitors in your application. This helps you to create segments and target guides. 

Most applications collect additional information about users to better understand who’s using their product. Talk to your IT team about the values that are available, keeping in mind what your reporting and in-app messaging needs might be. Some examples of visitor metadata include:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• User permissions (such as admin, user, and read-only)
• Role or title
• Department

As with Visitor IDs, we strongly recommend that you talk to your internal privacy, security, and IT teams about your business needs to ensure that the selected metadata is both approved and available.

You can pass metadata to Pendo in any of the following ways:

• Browser script injected into an app, including Salesforce.
• Okta Workflows.
• A CSV upload.
• The Pendo API.
• Endpoint management tools, including Jamf and GPO.

Next steps

After you’ve communicated with your IT team about security, privacy, target browsers, and target operating systems (Step 1), chosen a Visitor ID option (Step 2), and decided what metadata to capture (Step 3), you can install the Pendo Launcher, which is a browser extension.

Your IT team deploys the browser extension to your end-users and configures it with the extension API key, Visitor IDs, and metadata. For detailed instructions, see IT guide to deploying the Pendo Launcher.

After you’ve installed the Pendo Launcher:

1. Add extension apps. An extension application corresponds with a specific website, or sets of websites, that you plan to deploy Pendo on so that you can deliver guides and gather analytics on them.
2. Invite other internal users to help set up your subscription. Internal users can have different roles with their own sets of permissions. This allows you to give internal users the access they need while also protecting your subscription settings. For more information, see Roles and permissions.