OneSignal Segment integration overview

Overview

The OneSignal + Segment integration lets you:

  • Send user traits and events from Segment to OneSignal to enrich user profiles, power segmentation, and trigger messaging.
  • Send message delivery and engagement events from OneSignal to Segment for centralized analytics and data warehousing.

This bidirectional setup supports all major OneSignal channels: Push, In-App, Email, and SMS.


Requirements

  • A Growth, Professional or Enterprise OneSignal Account.
  • Segment Admin Permissions
  • The OneSignal Mobile SDK and/or Web SDK from which you want to send data. Email or SMS only integrations do not require the SDK.
  • The OneSignal Property: External ID which maps to the Segment.com userId.

Setup

1. Set up OneSignal

Use an existing app or create a new one in the OneSignal dashboard. Then set up your preferred channels:

2. Connect Segment to OneSignal

Within OneSignal Dashboard, navigate to Data > Integrations and click Active within Segment.com card. Then continue with the setup options.

Data in

“Data In” to OneSignal allows you to send OneSignal segments, tags, and custom events from your Segment.com account to OneSignal. Click Authenticate under the Data In section of the Segment.com setting page in the OneSignal Dashboard.

Custom events are currently in beta.
To request access, contact support@onesignal.com with:

  • Your company name
  • Your OneSignal Organization ID
  • The App ID(s) you want to enable

Once enabled to track custom events, the Segment.com integration will send both Data Tags and Events, so you will not need to update any existing templates that reference data tags.

Data In authentication settings

Once you click Authenticate, a Segment.com webpage will open and you’ll be prompted to sign in to your Segment.com account. You’ll then be prompted to configure a new data destination from your Segment.com account.

Segment setup configuration screen

Data out

Enabling “Data Out” to Segment.com syncs message events generated back to your Segment.com account. These message events are generated from sending messages to your users on the OneSignal platform. More details on what kind of events can be generated, and the properties they are sent with can be found below.

First, you need to add OneSignal as a source from your Segment.com account. You can do that by navigating to the OneSignal Source listing in the Segment Connections Catalogue.

From there, you can add your Segment.com API token on the OneSignal Dashboard. Please navigate Data > Integrations > Segment in the OneSignal Dashboard to add the Segment API key.

Data Out API key configuration

After you set up the API key, please make sure to check your Data Policy settings in Segment.com to determine if you need to send events to Segment’s EU Residency Endpoint.

Once all of those settings are done, you can then select which events you want to sync over to your Segment Account depending on which channels you utilize with OneSigna..

3. Add OneSignal destination in Segment

Within Segment.com Dashboard > Destinations you should see OneSignal. If not, add OneSignal as a new destination.

Enable the OneSignal Destination, you should also see your OneSignal API Key and App ID already

OneSignal destination configuration in Segment

If the API key and App Id are not set, navigate to the OneSignal dashboard, select the App, and go to the Settings > Keys & IDs. Copy-Paste the “App ID” and the “API key” into Segment.com.

Multiple Segment.com Sources

If you have multiple sources, you can utilize Segment’s Personas > Spaces feature to bind multiple sources to a destination.

4. Send data from Segment to OneSignal

OneSignal stores channel-level records: Push/IAM, Email, and SMS. These records must already be created in OneSignal and you must also set the External ID alias in OneSignal to match the userID field sent by Segment.com.

Records that don’t have a Segment User ID <—> OneSignal External ID mapping will be dropped.

User traits or properties

You can aggregate data across every customer touchpoint in Segment and then send these user properties in real-time to OneSignal as Data Tags.

Note: OneSignal can not accept nested objects or arrays as user properties.

Identify - User traits or properties sent using Segment’s Identify call are stored as data tags on OneSignal. For example:

User identify call example

Track - For events and associated properties sent using Segment’s Track call, OneSignal will store all the event properties as data tags, but drop the event name while storing the tags. If you want to keep the event names in the data tags, you can append the event name to the properties before sending them to OneSignal. For example:

let timestampInSeconds = Int(NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970).toString()//convert to string since Segment adds decimals to end
//name will be dropped and only properties will be sent to OneSignal as tag "last opened: timestampInSeconds"
analytics.track(
  name: "iOS App Last Opened", 
  properties: ["last opened": timestampInSeconds]
)

Track call properties example

User traits and properties interface

Personas Audience and Computed Traits

Persona Audiences automatically show up as a segment in OneSignal.

Computed traits are updated as Data Tags on the OneSignal user records.

Audience

Persona audience and computed traits interface

Audiences sent using Segment’s Track call will create a OneSignal segment with the Audience Name.

Audiences sent using Segment’s Identify call will

  • create a OneSignal segment with the Audience Name
  • add data tags (if there are additional properties in the Identify call) on all the matching user records.

Segments created in OneSignal from Segment

The Identify and Track calls are automatically sent to OneSignal whenever a user enters or exits the Audience.

Computed Traits Personas Computed Traits are stored as Data Tags on the OneSignal user records whether passed to OneSignal as an Identify call or a Track call. You can then use these data tags to manually create OneSignal segments and automate your messaging workflows.


Message Events

Event Kinds

These are the message event kinds that OneSignal sends to Segment

MessageEvent KindEvent Description
Push SentPush notification successfully sent
Push ReceivedPush notification successfully received
Push ClickedPush notification touched on device
In-App Message DisplayedIn-App Message successfully displayed on device
In-App Message ClickedIn-App Message clicked on device
In-App Message Page DisplayedIn-App Message page is displayed
Email SentEmail successfully sent
Email OpenedEmail opened by recipient
Email UnsubscribedEmail unsubscribed by recipient
Email ReceivedEmail received by recipient
Email Reported As SpamEmail reported as spam by recipient
Email HardbouncedEmail returned to sender due to permanent error
Email FailedCould not deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox
SMS SentSMS sent to recipient
SMS DeliveredSMS successfully delivered
SMS FailedSMS failed to send

Event Properties

These are the properties that are present on events sent from OneSignal to Segment.com

PROPERTY NAMEDESCRIPTION
userIdThe external_id associated with the message
anonymousIdThe subscription_id
messageIdThe identifier of the discrete message
campaign_idThe same value as messageId
message_nameThe message name
message_titleThe message title
message_contentsThe message contents
subscription_typeThe channel the message was sent through
template_idThe message template used
subscription_id.The OneSignal set device/email/sms identifier
device_typeThe device type that received the message
languageThe two character language code of the device
message_typeThe type of message sent, push, in-app, email, SMS

FAQ

How can we pass Subscription events?

Subscription events are not currently being sent automatically. This can be done with the OneSignal SDK Subscription Observer Methods. See Subscription Tracking for more details.

Managing Segment’s Reserved and Custom User Properties in OneSignal

  • All the Segment’s user traits are sent to OneSignal as data tags. The number of data tags allowed on OneSignal depends on your OneSignal pricing plan. Tags over the entitled number will be dropped.
  • OneSignal always updates the firstName and the lastName properties for matching users. All other traits are added/updated on a first-come basis. firstName and lastName tags are stored as “first_name” and “last_name”.
  • User properties sent to OneSignal with blank/null values are removed from the OneSignal user record. This is done to make sure you are within your data tag limits.