Create and Synchronize Profiles

The types of person profiles are key in deciding which synchronization method to use: Leads and Customers are profiles reflecting a person`s status in the customer journey, while Company is a group profile that includes members of the same company. Anonymous visitors are not defined as having people profiles however if you have deployed Web SDK on a website you will be able to track anonymous visitor activity before they are converted to leads and customers.

To start creating any profile type, you need an Infobip account, and your existing customer information should be ready to get imported to People or integrated using APIs, SDKs, or external platforms. 

Your current data setup and business goals will help you decide how you want to connect to our platform. For example, use JS SDK to connect your website to People: this will let you "record" user actions and send relevant messages or offer the right service. Or, you could integrate your Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365 account with People and send targeted messages. 

This section will be your quick guide on how to add profiles and align them between People and other Infobip solutions and external systems. 

Create and Update

A good place to get familiar with People would be to build a profile manually on the Infobip web interface, and then we will get to more practical ways: adding profiles via People API and SDKs, and using them with different internal and external solutions. Browse through all the options and go for those that match your business needs.  

Keep in mind that, when creating a new profile from API, you will be able to select its type: Lead or Customer. If the type is not specified, it will be recorded as a Customer profile. 

Note that JS Web SDK can track events and update profile attributes for Leads; updating the Customer type is restricted. 

In addition, don`t use the following characters inside the the First Name, Last Name, Middle Name and Nickname fields:   & < > " / \ \n \r : ( ) { } = ; #  

This rule applies to the creation and editing of profiles.

Web Interface

Sign in to the web interface, go to the People module and decide if you want to create a People profile or Company profile. 

 

Create a Lead or Customer

To manually add a person`s profile, follow these steps: 

1. Contact Information - enter email or phone number.
2. Basic Information - enter your first and last name, address, and other optional information. Remember to select the type: Customer or Lead.

3. Finally, add any tags or custom attributes that you want linked to this profile. 

4. Click Create Person. 

5. You will be redirected to the newly created profile. 

Create Company Profile

On the main page in the People module, click Create Company to enter the company name and domain. Basic information and any relevant tags and custom attributes are optional, but it is best to add as much information as possible. This will add to the relevance of your communication with businesses. 

Each company page has two sections: Overview and People.

API

The Infobip People API connects your website, CRM, or app to our data platform. You can do basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations and, in some cases, more advanced operations over the following objects in People:

• Profiles
• Companies
• Tags
• Custom attributes
• Contact information: Push
• Events

For more information about these operations, refer to the People API documentation.

To start using these objects, follow the steps, including getting your API key, in the Infobip API documentation. Next, learn how to manage your audience. .

Web SDK

Web SDK is a JavaScript library that Infobip provides for you to integrate your website with People. It enables progressive customer profiling by:

1. Tracking activity of both anonymous and known visitors on your website (sessions, pages viewed, custom site actions that you define)
2. Converting anonymous visitors to new Leads or matching to existing Lead profiles as they fill out a web form or subscribe to a newsletter and merging their entire pre-identification website activity to the identified profile.
3. Matching anonymous visitors to existing Customer profiles as they log into their site account and merging their pre-login session events into the Customer profile timeline. 
4. Updating Lead profiles with information collected from identified users on the website.

To get started with the Web SDK take a look at the People Web SDK Github documentation.

Mobile SDK

Mobile SDK covers Leads and Customers. A few scenarios apply to this method:

-When the user installs an app and opens it, an empty Lead profile will be created. Check out the following quick start guides: 

• Android guide
• iOS guide
• Huawei guide

Plugins guide for Frameworks

• React Native guide
• Cordova guide
• Flutter guide

 

-When the user logs in, and Infobip confirms this is a real Lead profile using the data from the 3rd system, this is what happens:

• If the Lead does not exist in People, a Customer profile will be created, together with the provided contact information.
• If the Lead profile exists, it will be deleted based on the matching email address or phone number.  A new Customer will be created using the push registration (PushReg ID), and all provided information will be included.
• If the Customer profile exists, PushReg ID is moved from Lead to Customer profile. The Lead is deleted.

The Users and Installations documentation will help you set up everything: 

• Android and Huawei guides
• iOS guide

Plugins guide for Frameworks

• React Native guide
• Cordova guide
• Flutter guide 

 

-When the user logs out, the app is disconnected from the existing Customer profile and a new, empty Lead is created.

Internal Integrations

Leads are automatically created via these Infobip solutions when visitors of the external systems (such as a web page), connected to our platform, interact with that system:

Moments. Collect leads and nurture them to customers via Flow, our two-way communication tool, or use Broadcast for one-way communication. Information acquired during that communication will be automatically updated in People. Note: When an inbound SMS message is received over Flow and the person's profile doesn`t exist, a Lead will be created in most cases. If a Lead or Customer profile does exist, it will be used in Flow.
 

Forms. When a person submits a form on your website, the profile of the type Lead is created in People. If the profile already exists, there are specific processing rules that will be applied.  

Import

Instead of manually creating each profile, your existing data for Leads, Customers, and Companies can be transferred to People using Files or API. These are the main import rules: 

• By default, we import Leads if the type is not specified.
• User can specify a type that will be used during the import.

Lead Profiles

Check if the profile of the type Lead already exists:

• If it doesn`t, a new Lead or Customer is created.
• If there is a duplicate profile: choose to make no changes or rewrite the current profile. Lead will be updated; if the Customer profile is being created, only empty fields are filled. 

Customer Profiles

If the CRM integration with the People module is possible, check whether the profile can be created using our web interface or API. If it can, a new lead or customer is created. If not, see if the profile exists on the People platform: 

• If the profile doesn`t exist, a new Lead or Customer is created.
• If there is a duplicate profile, choose to make no changes or rewrite the current Lead or Customer profile. The Lead profile will be promoted to Customer, and the Customer profile will be updated. 

Use Files

Prepare the file

The file must follow these specifications:

• Supported file format: .csv, .xls, .xslx, .txt, or .zip
• Maximum file size: 25 MB
• For all file formats other than .zip files, if the file size exceeds the maximum file size, try compressing it into a .zip file. The .zip file should contain only 1 compressed file. If you add more than 1 file, only the first file is used to create the profiles, and the other files are ignored.

To import profiles that have multiple email addresses or phone numbers, create separate rows in the import file for each additional contact for a profile. The file can contain a maximum of 20 phone numbers and 20 email addresses for each profile. Records that exceed this limit are reported as invalid during the file analysis and are not imported.

Example:

ID	First Name	Last Name	Phone Number	Email
5366	Daniel	Smith	18004444444	[email protected]
5366	Daniel	Smith	12136210002	[email protected]

Import the file

To import the file, follow these steps:

1. On the Infobip web interface, go to People > Persons > Import people.
2. Select a file from your system.
3. Select Next.
4. (Optional) In the Skip rows field, select the row from which the data needs to be imported. The rows before the specified row are ignored during the import.
5. In the Person type field, select one of the following profile types for the profiles in the file.

• Customer
• Lead

This field is applied only to new profiles and not to existing profiles.

6. In the Map your data section, map the columns in your file with the fields in People.

   

• To undo the mapping for a specific column, select the undo option.

  

• To skip specific columns from your file, leave them unmapped. The system does not import these columns.

  

7. (Optional) For a data column that is mapped as a Number, you can add a country prefix to the phone numbers. In Options, select Add a country prefix and select a country from the list. To modify your selection, select the required country from the list. To discard your selection, select Unset from the list.

   

8. Select Analyze.
9. Select what happens when a matching person profile already exists in People. In this case, one or more of the fields (External Person ID, phone, or email) for an existing profile is the same as the profile in the file.

• Discard – Remove duplicate records from a file and do not import them.
• Merge – Merge duplicate records into one person profile.

10. Assign tags to track the profiles that were imported. Select one of the following options:

• None - Tags are not applied to the imported profiles.
• Automatically - A default system tag is applied to the imported profiles.
• Manually - Either create new tags or select existing tags to apply to the imported profiles. You can add more than one tag.

  

11. To include the tagged profiles in an existing active flow, enable Add tagged profiles to an active flow. Select the required flow from the list. The following happens:

• All tags that you specify in the Assign tags section are added to the Predefined Audience entry point of the selected flow.
• All profiles that contain these tags enter the flow.
• If the tags are assigned to profiles after the import, these profiles enter the flow.
• If you specify an existing tag, all profiles that contain these tags enter the flow, even if the profiles are not part of the import file.
  
  This field is applicable only if you assign tags either manually or automatically.

  

12. Select Import.
13. On the confirmation screen, select Import.

    

The import time depends on the amount of data in your file. You will get a notification when the import is complete.

Use API

Choose to use People API if you want to completely eliminate the need for manual import of audience information to the customer data platform. Generate your API key, and then go over the instructions about how to manage audiences.

Resolve Duplicates

When importing a file into People and a duplicate appears, choose whether you wish to discard or auto-resolve the duplicated data. If discarded, the duplicated data won't be imported into the system.

And how does auto-resolve work? Let's say you have two entries that share the same phone number inside your file and one person with the same phone number in your People database. This first image is of file data where 2 rows share the same phone number, and the second one shows a profile in People with the same phone number.   

When importing data, select Auto Resolve, and the system will do the following: 

1. Find all the duplicate records in the file. In the first example above, rows 1 and 2 share the same phone number but have different email addresses and names.

2. Find if there is another profile with the same number or email address on the People platform. In the example we are using, the phone number 385911234567 already belongs to Person ID 2649 in People. 

3. Merge duplicate records inside the file into one row with the phone number 385991234567 as the basis for this action. 

4. Merge from the file. Person ID 2649 with phone number 385911234567 is the basis for this action.  As a result, you will have one person Person ID 2649 with the name Chloe Omny, phone number 385911234567, and two email addresses from the file. We can store multiple different email addresses or numbers per person. 

Merge Profiles

Sometimes a customer will enter your customer base via 2 different channels and have 2 different profiles: one based on their phone number and another one on the email address or Facebook ID. To streamline communication, we recommend that you find these `duplicate` profiles and merge them.

1.    In the People module, there is a List View showing all profiles. Select the ones you want to merge and click Merge.

 You can also select one profile and then search for another one that belongs to the same person (Find and Merge).

2. Decide what information you would like to keep in the final, merged profile; at least one contact information field has to be selected. Only duplicated fields will appear in the side panel. 

The field that exists only within one of the profiles will be automatically added to the new, merged profile. To view these fields, click Show More. 

Synchronize

Keep the information between your platform and ours continuously flowing and updating via external integration options or API. 

API

Our API documentation will guide you through the set-up. For starters, an API key is available through the Infobip API page, and for further instructions about how to manage audiences, explore the People section in our customer engagement documentation. 

External Integrations

External integrations support all types of profiles available on our data platform. When mapping data, check that the fields match (Lead-to-Lead and Customer-to-Customer). This will be additionally explained in the integration articles for the two types of integration that we currently offer: 

 

Export

To export person profiles to xlsx format, you can do so from the People view of the People module.  Select the profiles you want to export, then click Export to open the export window.

In the export window, select the standard attributes, contact information, and/or custom attributes you want to include in your export. If you have lots of attributes in your system then use the search bar to filter available items.

When you are ready to export the data, click Export. The export will start immediately. Once complete, download the export file by clicking the Download button at the bottom left of the People screen.