What does anonymity scope actually change, and is it safe to switch it?
Consolidating two applications into one workspace. Goal: anonymous users recognized across both apps.
Found the anonymity scope setting but the docs page I had bookmarked moved. Questions:
- exact options and default?
- side effects of switching on existing anonymous profiles and sessions?
- any interaction with identity resolution I should know before flipping it
prefer exact behavior over general advice, this feeds our event pipeline.
2 answers
The answer above is correct, and here are the exact behaviors requested.
- The anonymity scope options are Application, Workspace (the default), and Organization. The scope determines the boundary within which an anonymous user is recognized as the same profile. With both applications in one workspace, the default Workspace scope already recognizes anonymous users across them.
- Changing the scope restarts anonymous sessions. This is the only immediate side effect, and it is expected behavior rather than an error.
- On identity resolution: anonymous and identified profiles never associate with each other for sync purposes. Identity resolution links profiles through matching rules on contact attributes such as email and phone, running up to 5 rounds. When linked profiles have conflicting attribute values, the most recent value wins per attribute, while set attributes such as interests are merged rather than overwritten.
For your event pipeline, the practical takeaway is that point 2 produces a one-time discontinuity in anonymous session identifiers at the moment of the switch, and nothing else changes retroactively.
I went through this last quarter. The options are Application, Workspace, and Organization, and Workspace is the default. So if both applications sit in the same workspace you may already have what you want without touching anything, worth checking before you change a setting in production.
The side effect I can confirm from experience: when we changed the scope, anonymous sessions restarted. Not a data loss thing, but our session counts had a visible seam that week, so if your pipeline alerts on session volume, warn whoever owns the dashboard first.