This article describes the basic architecture of multi-app subscriptions.
Subscriptions and applications
A subscription is a level above an application. Every Pendo subscription has a default application and can contain additional applications. For information on how to add more applications to your subscription, see Add more web apps.
An application in Pendo is usually a standalone product or a part of a more complex product, and typically aligns with a single platform, such as web, iOS, or Android. This application might be owned by a specific product team, live in its own codebase, or have separate marketing and visitors from other parts of the product.
Each application has its own app key, referred to as the API key, in the install script. For information about this key, see Components of the install script. A single-app subscription uses one app (API) key. A multi-app subscription involves having an app (API) key for each application.
Use cases for multi-app subscriptions
A multi-app subscription might be the best way to align your product (application) and your Pendo subscription if you want the flexibility to look at your data holistically or at the application level. You can choose to:
- Exclude different applications from your cross-app view.
- Include specific applications in your cross-app view to see data from that subset.
- Select a single application at a time to view application data separately.
For example, if your product is built on several platforms and you want to view data only from your mobile applications in a dashboard, you can add an Apps filter and then select multiple applications individually, or view all of your mobile applications, regardless of the specific mobile OS (Android, iOS, or Windows).
A multi-app subscription also allows you to give Pendo users different permissions to different applications. You can do this by assigning different app-level roles for each application in your subscription.
For example, if you want a Pendo user to be able to create and edit guides in only one application, you can give Guide Creator permissions to that Pendo user only for that mobile application and not for any of your other applications.
For information about app-level roles, see Roles and permissions. For instructions on how to assign different roles for different apps, see Manage internal users.
Prerequisites
For optimal multi-app subscriptions, Visitor IDs must identify the same end users across your apps. For example, an ID of “1234” must represent the same Visitor in App1 as in App2. If two distinct visitors are both identified with “1234” in different apps, you need a separate subscription for your apps or a separate identifier to preserve visitor uniqueness.
If you have apps that pass different IDs across applications because they don't identify the same visitor across applications, the format can't overlap. If there's an overlap, the metadata from one app can overwrite the metadata from another app.
What happens at the subscription level
Visitors, Accounts, Product Areas, segments, reports, internal users, and integrations are processed and stored at the subscription level.
There's a single source of data, security settings, and user permissions in a subscription. Each subscription houses all underlying guidance, analytics, and feedback and doesn’t communicate with other, separate subscriptions. This means that:
- All settings, content, and services are managed separately for each subscription.
- Users aren’t shared between subscriptions.
- Users in one subscription can only access data in another subscription if they have access to both subscriptions.
A subscription is located in a specific region: US, EU, and so on. Each region has its own data center to support different compliance requirements.
You can have more than one subscription if you want to keep the data separate so that you can manage different products separately (for example, by different departments or with unique user access, security, and compliance requirements) or because you have separate user bases for your products.
What happens at the application level
Events, Pages, Features, tags, guides, and feedback requests are collected, processed, and stored at the application level. Each app in your subscription also has its own Resource Center. You can customize the Resource Center for each app in the same way or individually. For more information on the Resource Center, see the Overview of the Resource Center.
Each application within a subscription is identified by its own app (API) key in Subscription Settings under App Details and Install Settings.
If you have more than one subscription, check that you’re in the correct subscription before launching the designer to create a guide, Page, or Feature in an application. The application name is displayed in the top-right of the Visual Design Studio.
Functionality
Although Visitor IDs can persist across applications, Pendo functionality is app-specific. This means that:
- If a guide is created for one app, it won’t show up in others.
- Pages and Features only correspond to the app in which they’re tagged.
- Feedback end users only see feature requests for the particular apps they have access to.
You can see user behavior in one, some, or all of the apps in a subscription. This means that you can run a Pendo subscription across multiple applications and still filter your analytics, guides, and feedback to specific applications if you want to. This is useful when:
- You have web and mobile versions of the same app.
- You have multiple web apps that can identify the same visitors.
- You want to compare data across multiple apps that pass unique IDs that don’t overlap in format.
You can switch between apps with dropdown menus in Pendo. You can also use this functionality as high-level segmentation for dashboard widgets and behavior tools.
Setup
Each application has its own app (API) key. We use the app key to differentiate between the events for each application in your Pendo subscription. This is how we separate analytics, guides, and feedback across different products, giving you more control.
Your development team must use the corresponding app key for each app in your Pendo subscription. To find an application's API key:
- Navigate to Settings > Subscription Settings.
- Open the Applications tab.
- Find and open the relevant app from your Applications list. The App Details tab is open by default.
- Find the 32-digit string on the API key row.
You can also find the app key from the Install Settings tab. The key is the string at the bottom of your install script.
Find your Subscription ID
Typically, the subscription ID is needed for CNAME, CSP, and other feature setups. You can find your subscription ID in the URL when you navigate to the Subscription Settings page.
Additional resources
Visit the Pendo Academy for a video on multi-app best practices.
If you want additional help deciding between using a multi-app subscription versus multiple individual subscriptions, we recommend watching our video on subscription architecture.