App Extensions

Today Extensions

Today Extensions are widgets that appear on the device’s “Today” screen. These app extensions are allowed very limited resources by the OS, and may be terminated if they consume too much memory or processing power.

Use the Swift library as normal inside a Today Extension but, in order to keep the memory footprint low, we recommend using only the Collect module to transmit data. The Tag Management module may be too resource intensive and result in your widget being terminated.

Regardless of the option chosen, it is important to thoroughly test and ensure your widget performs as expected. Embedding fewer Tealium modules in your widget results in greater performance and a lower memory footprint.

watchOS Extensions and Independent Apps

If you are adding a watchOS target to an iOS project that already has Tealium installed then add the necessary modules, TealiumHelper to the Watch Extension target, and necessary tracking calls. The Tag Management module is not supported on watchOS, due to the dependency on WKWebView; the Collect module is the only supported method of data collection on watchOS.

Alternatively, you could use the WatchConnectivty framework’s WCSession API to send a message to the host iOS app each time you wish to send a tracking call. This allows the event to be tracked by the Tag Management module if you are using it, but is not an option for an independent watchOS app.

Visitor ID in App Extensions

App Extensions have their own sandboxed data storage, which is not shared with the host iOS app (if available). Therefore, by default, a new persistent visitor ID is generated when the app is started for the first time.

A problem arises if you have an iOS app, Today widget, and the watchOS extension, resulting in 3 distinct visitor IDs for the same visitor. If you are using Visitor Stitching, and already have a known visitor ID for the app user, then this is not a problem. This situation is avoidable if you synchronize the visitor IDs across the app and it’s extensions. To do this, pass the current Tealium first party visitor ID in the TealiumConfig object of the app extension when initializing Tealium. Then the ID is stored and used for future launches of the app, without being regenerated.

class TealiumHelper {

	var tealium: Tealium?

	// ...

	// Return the current visitor ID from the Tealium Swift library on the iOS app
	func getVisitorId() -> String? {
		return self.tealium?.getVisitorId()
	}

	// On the app extension, pass the ID retrieved from the iOS app in the config object
	private func initTealium(existingVisitorId id: String) {
		let config = TealiumConfig(account: "ACCOUNT",
 	       		                 profile: "PROFILE",
        	   	                 environment: "ENVIRONMENT",
           		                 datasource: "DATASOURCE")

		// existing ID is used as the first party ID in the app extension
        config.setExistingVisitorId(id)
        self.tealium = Tealium(config: config)
	}

}

Altenratively, generate your own visitor ID centrally and pass it to each Tealium instance at initialization time. It is important that the ID is unique, so we recommend using a UUID. Do not use a simple ID such as email address for your first party visitor ID.