Identify visitors

Koala allows you to identify your visitors with their email. This enables Koala to associate the visitor with a specific company, track them on different platforms, and connect events from before and after they log in.

Identifying visitors can be done with the identify method in Koala’s JavaScript SDK. By using this method, you can enhance your ability to understand visitor and company intent throughout Koala.

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Anonymous visitors

Every visitor to your website is automatically assigned a unique anonymous ID by the Koala JavaScript SDK. You can use the identify method to provide additional properties about the visitor even before you know their email address. This information can help you better understand traits about your visitors.

In order to track visitors across different devices, use the identify method to associate events with a logged-in user instead of just the device they are using.

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Identifying a visitor

When a visitor signs up for your product for the first time, or logs in again, you can use the identify method to associate their email address with their anonymous ID. This allows Koala to associate events from before and after they log in and Koala can associate the visitor with a specific company.

You should use the identify method whenever a visitor:

• Signs up for your product
• Logs in
• Provides their email address in a form
• Loads a page as a logged-in user

ko.identify('[email protected]')

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Setting visitor traits

You can use the traits (2nd parameter) to supply additional details about the anonymous or known visitor. This can include any relevant information that helps you understand your visitors better. You can use this data to filter and segment your visitors in Koala. Some examples of visitor traits are:

• name: The visitor’s full name
• title: The visitor’s job title
• role: The visitor’s role
• and whatever else is important to your business

Here is an example of using the identify method to set visitor traits:

ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  name: 'Jane Doe',
  title: 'Product Manager'
})

We recommend sending traits along with every identify call to make sure your visitor’s profile is up to date.

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Setting account traits

In addition to capturing visitor traits, you can also specify account-level traits. This is any data about the company or organization you want Koala to know about. You can use account traits to set up filters and lists in Koala.

Here is an example of using the identify method to set account traits:

ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  $account: {
    name: 'Acme Inc.',
    domain: 'example.com',
    plan: 'Enterprise'
  }
})

When you specify the $account.domain, Koala will automatically associate that company with the visitor, if not already associated.

If domain is not a unique value for your account-level data, for instance if you have multiple Teams or Workspaces that all link back to the same domain, you can specify the group_id to distinguish them. It’s recommended to always include a group_id that is a unique id for the group of data.

ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  $account: {
    group_id: '<replace-with-unique-id-for-acme-inc>',
    name: 'Acme Inc.',
    domain: 'example.com',
    plan: 'Enterprise'
  }
})

You can link multiple sets of group_id traits to the same domain, but you cannot do it in a single identify call:

// ✅ Allowed
ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  $account: {
    group_id: 'acme-production-id',
    name: 'Acme Inc.',
    domain: 'example.com',
    plan: 'Enterprise'
  }
})
ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  $account: {
    group_id: 'acme-test-environment-id',
    name: 'Acme Inc.',
    domain: 'example.com',
    plan: 'Free'
  }
})

Unlike some product analytics tools that have a group concept, we do not support capturing group_ids for events/pageviews. Instead, they are only used for collecting sets of traits you want to associate with a given account (company/domain).

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Identifying with Google Sign In, Passwordless Magic Links (or others)

Typically, the Koala pixel autocaptures emails from form submissions, which works great for traditional login forms. However, for more advanced login methods, like Google Sign-In, GitHub Sign-In, or Single Sign-On (SSO), manual intervention is required.

If you use these types of sign-in methods, you’ll need to manually call ko.identify after the user has successfully logged in. We recommend installing the Koala pixel on the landing page of your logged-in site, and then calling ko.identify from there with the user’s email. You can also provide any other relevant traits you want to see or use in Koala.

ko.identify('[email protected]', {
  name: 'Jane Doe', 
  title: 'Product Manager'
})

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Reset after logout

When a user logs out on your frontend, you should call ko.reset(). This will prevent future events from that device from being linked with that user. This is especially important when a device is shared by multiple users.