Docs
DevelopersIntegrationsGuides

Integrations

Braze (formerly Appboy)
CategoriesAll

Event

Braze is a marketing automation platform for mobile apps with app analytics, segmentation, newsfeed, push, in-app messaging, email marketing, and user feedback feature sets.

Braze offers a broad range of functionality via their solution and it is critically important that you work directly with your Braze representative to ensure that you are correctly planning and implementing their features. mParticle does not recommend enabling forwarding to Braze until you have completed the Braze planning process with your Braze team.

mParticle Braze Implementation Scenarios

The mParticle SDK allows you to include the Braze kit which allows Braze interface components (images, layout files, etc.) and as a result supports the entire Braze feature set, which includes:

  • App Analytics
  • User Segmentation
  • Push Notifications
  • Email
  • News Feed
  • In-App Messaging
  • Feedback
  • Geolocation

The mParticle S2S API allows you to send data server side (API reference). The S2S API supports iOS, Android and Web data. In this scenario, mParticle forwards data via Braze’s REST API which supports a limited set of features:

  • App Analytics
  • User Segmentation
  • Push Notifications
  • Email

Kit Integration

The Braze solution offers features that involve Braze-proprietary user interaction components including Newsfeed, In-App Messaging, and Feedback. In order to properly incorporate Braze with the mParticle SDK, please review the Kits section of the mParticle SDK Guide. To enable Newsfeed, In-App Messaging, and Feedback features you will need to call the Appboy embedded kit directly.

Push Notifications

Push notifications work a bit differently for web and for mobile.

Web

mParticle integrates with Braze to allow web push notifications to further engage your visitors. We integrated Braze’s Soft Push Prompts, which allows you to ask your user if they’d like to stay in touch before the browser alerts them to allow notifications. This is done since the browser throttles how often you can prompt the user for push notifications, and if the user denies permission, you can never ask them again. See below for directions on how to implement push notifications, which customizes Braze’s implementation instructions to work with mParticle.

  1. To support browsers based on Chromium 51 and earlier, create a Firebase Cloud Messaging Project.

    • Select the gear icon next to your project name and select Project Settings.
    • Select the Cloud Messaging tab and note the Server Key and Sender ID.

  2. Configure your site

    • Add <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> to the <head> section of your website. Add a manifest.json file in the root of your site and enter the content below:
    {
    "gcm_sender_id": "YOUR_CLOUD_MESSAGING_SENDER_ID"
}
    • Create a service-worker.js file to your root directory. Inside your service-worker.js file, include
    self.importScripts('https://static.mparticle.com/sdk/js/braze/service-worker.js');

    mParticle hosts Braze’s service worker in order to prevent unpredictable versioning issues. Do not use Braze’s service-worker.js cdn.

  3. Set you Cloud Messaging Key

  4. Configure Safari Push

  5. Create a “Prime for Push” in-app messaging Campaign on the Braze dashboard.

    • Make it a “Modal” In-App Message. Give it whatever text and styling you wish to present to the user (“Can we stay in touch?”).

    • Give the in-app message a Button 1 Text value of “OK” (or whatever affirmative text you wish), and set the On-Click Behavior to “Close Message.”

    • Under the gear composer section, add a key-value pair. Give it a key of msg-id and a value of push-primer.

    • You can create a prime-for-push custom event (or name it whatever you’d like) from the Braze dashboard. While still in the Braze dashboard, create a trigger action of whatever your custom event is (ie, prime-for-push). In the mParticle Braze connection settings, fill in the "Soft Push" Custom Event Name with your custom event name (ie. prime-for-push). When this field is filled, users will be sent the Soft Push Prompt on session load.

    • Optionally, you can change the name and location of service-worker.js. The following example will clarify the steps:

      • Let’s say that you want to rename your service-worker.js file to braze-push-worker.js and store it in inside a directory in your root folder called thirdParty/.
      • In your mParticle dashboard, open your Braze connection settings. Under Push Notification Service Worker File Location, type in /thirdParty/braze-push-worker.js and click Save.
      • Warning - Setting a value here limits the scope of push notifications on your site. For instance, in the above example, because the service worker file is located within the /thirdParty/ directory, asking for push notifications MAY ONLY BE CALLED from web pages that start with http://yoursite.com/thirdParty/.

Mobile

As long as the Appboy Kit is included in your app, mParticle will pass any Push Notifications from Braze to the kit for display. However, you will need to provide credentials in the Braze dashboard.

See the main iOS and Android Push Notification documentation for more detail.

Location Tracking

The Braze kits for iOS and Android support Braze’s automatic location tracking features, provided that the appropriate app-level permissions are granted by the user.

Android

For Android push notifications you will need to provide your Server Key in your app settings page under Push Notification Settings.

iOS

For iOS push notifications you will need to upload your APNs Push SSL certificate to Braze. See the Braze documentation for more.

Special Considerations for mParticle A/B Testing With Braze and the mParticle SDK

mParticle supports the ability to conduct A/B testing with different integrations by sending a sample of users and their data to one integration and a different sample of users and their data to a different integration. If you are using the mParticle SDK for Braze deployment and calling Braze methods directly, when instrumenting with the mParticle SDK you must ensure that the Appboy kit is active in the App before calling an Appboy method. This is very important and ensures that you are not inadvertently calling Braze methods for apps/users that are not part of an Braze A/B sample.

Data Processing Notes

mParticle will always forward events if sent via the mParticle SDK, provided you have included the Braze kit, but will only forward events sent via the mParticle S2S API if the following conditions apply:

  1. The App Group REST API Key setting is specified
  2. Either your set External Identity Type, or a push token is specified
  3. Braze has limits on the number of characters in a property key - they must be less than or equal to 255 characters, with no leading dollar signs. mParticle will remove the dollar sign ($) when forwarding property keys for user attributes, custom and e-commerce events.

Data Center Location

Braze maintains several data clusters so, as part of the Configuration Settings, you need to specify which cluster your data should be forwarded to. Generally, older Braze customers are in the US 01 Cluster, while newer customers are in US 03 Cluster. You can tell your Data Cluster from the URL of your Braze Dashboard:

Cluster Dashboard URL
US 01 Cluster https://dashboard.braze.com
US 02 Cluster https://dashboard-02.braze.com
US 03 Cluster https://dashboard-03.braze.com
EU 01 Cluster https://dashboard.braze.eu

Check with your Braze account manager if you are unsure which data cluster you are using.

It is also possible to set a ‘Custom’ location. For this option you will need to provide separate endpoints for your SDK, Server and Web data. Talk to your Braze account manager if you need to use custom endpoints.

Prerequisites

In order to activate the Braze integration, you will need your Braze API key and your “App Group REST API Key” if using the S2S API.

  1. Sign into your Braze Account.
  2. Click on App Settings in the left navigation to get your API Key
  3. If you are sending data to mParticle via the S2S API, your “App Group REST API Key” value is required. Click on the Developer Console in the left navigation to get this value.

AppBoy Settings

Event Data Mapping

Purchases

All events enabled for LTV tracking will forwarded as purchase events to Braze, if the following event attributes are defined:

  • transactionId
  • unitPrice

Please note that this includes events generated by calls to logTransaction, with the MPProduct attributes transactionId and unitPrice defined. We also pass the currencyCode attribute of the corresponding MPProduct object, or assume that the currency is USD if it’s not defined.

If productQuantity is greater than 1, we will forward Braze a purchase event for each individual unit of the product (i.e. we’ll send two identical purchase events if productQuantity equals 2).

Screen Views

Your screen view events will be passed to Braze using the screen name that you passed to our logScreen SDK method, as the event name.

If you are using automatic screen tracking in our Android SDK, the automatically-generated screen view events will be forwarded to Braze using the name of the associated Activity class.

Custom Events

All custom events will be forwarded to Braze using the event name that you passed to your logEvent SDK method. All event attributes will be forwarded to Braze as Braze custom event properties using the attribute names you passed to your logEvent SDK method as well.

User Attributes

The table below describes how the mParticle integration maps user attributes to Braze’s profile attributes.

mParticle Field Braze Profile Attribute Description
User Identity of type CustomerId external_id
User Attribute $FirstName first_name
User Attribute $LastName last_name
User Identity of type Email email
Derived from User Attribute $Age) dob mParticle estimates the user’s date of birth by subtracting $Age from the current year, and using January 1st as the month and day. For example, if $Age is 10 and the current year is 2014, we’ll forward the user’s date of birth as 2004-01-01. If an exact birth date is desired, set a user attribute called dob with user’s birth date. When both $Age and dob user attributes are sent, one value may override the other when mParticle forwards data to Braze. So it is recommended that one of them is toggled Off in mParticle’s data filter for Braze.
User Attribute $Country country
User Attribute $City home_city
User Attribute $Gender gender
User Attribute $Mobile phone
Derived from SDK opt-out status email_subscribe This is based on calling the OptOut (setOptOut in Android) SDK method . It will be set to opted_in when called with a value of true and will be set to unsubscribed when called with a value of false.
push_tokens Because Braze can only accept a single push token for each app/user pair, we will forward the most recently-registered push token to Braze per user and per app.
User Identity of type Facebook facebook
User Identity of type Twitter twitter

Enriched Attributes

By default, mParticle forwards all avaliable user attributes to Braze, including attributes added during profile enrichment. You can disable this behavior in the Connection Settings.

Configuration Settings

Setting Name Data Type Default Value Description
API Key string Your app’s API Key can be found in your Braze dashboard.
External Identity Type enum Customer ID The mParticle User Identity Type to forward as an External ID to Braze.
Braze Instance enum United States Specify which cluster your Braze data will be forwarded to. Please ensure you are contractually authorized to use the EU cluster if you select that option. If you choose ‘Custom’, you will need to provide separate endpoints for your SDK, Server, and Web data.

Connection Settings

Setting Name Data Type Default Value Platform Description
Enable HTML within in-app messages bool False Web Enable HTML within in-app messages. This correlates to the enableHtmlInAppMessages setting of the Braze SDK.
Forward screen view messages bool False All If enabled, all screen view messages will be forwarded to Braze as separate events.
Automatically display new in-app messages bool True Web Automatically display new in-app messages when they come in from the server.
App Group REST API Key string All The App Group REST API Key can be found in the developer console section of the Braze dashboard. This field is optional when sending in data via the SDK, but is required for using the S2S API.
Push Enabled bool True iOS, Android Forward GCM registration IDs to the Braze SDK and enable Braze push notifications.
Event Attributes that add to array Custom Field iOS, Android Select your mParticle event names and event attributes and enter the corresponding Braze custom attribute array name you want the event attribute ADDED to.
Event Attributes that remove from array Custom Field iOS, Android Select your mParticle event names and event attributes and enter the corresponding Braze custom attribute array name you want the event attribute REMOVED from.
Event Attributes that set to custom attribute value Custom Field iOS, Android Select your mParticle event names and event attributes and enter the corresponding Braze custom attribute you want the event attribute to map to. Note each time this event attribute is present, it will get sent to Braze and overwrite any previously sent value.
Braze SDK Flush Interval string iOS, tvOS Braze SDK data flush internal in seconds (iOS only). Refer to Braze sdk doc for “ABKFlushIntervalOptionKey”.
Braze SDK Request Policy string iOS, tvOS Braze SDK request policy at app start time (iOS only). Refer to Braze sdk doc for “ABKRequestProcessingPolicyOptionKey”.
Braze SDK Session Timeout string All Braze SDK time interval for session time out in seconds.
Braze SDK Minimum Time Interval Between Triggers string iOS, tvOS Braze SDK minimum time interval in seconds between triggers (iOS only). Refer to Braze sdk doc for “ABKMinimumTriggerTimeIntervalKey”.
Braze SDK Collect IDFA? bool False iOS, tvOS Informs the Braze Kit whether to collect IDFA.
Include Enriched User Attributes bool True iOS, tvOS If enabled, mParticle will forward enriched user attributes from the existing user profile.
Do not Load FontAwesome bool False Web Disable loading of FontAwesome from the FontAwesome CDN. Note that if you do this, you are responsible for ensuring that FontAwesome is loaded - otherwise in-app messages may not render correctly.

Was this page helpful?