IBM Universal Behavior Exchange Destination

Destination Info
Components
  • Server
Connection Modes
Device-mode Cloud-mode
Web Web
Mobile Mobile
Server Server

IBM’s Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) is an API that allows users to share customer interactions, behaviors, and target audiences among IBM solutions and applications - including the Watson Marketing Portfolio - without the need for custom software integration. In effect, UBX is the “Segment” of IBM’s ecosystem. Once data is routed to IBM, you can send it to any destination in UBX’s portfolio.

NOTE: IBM UBX is currently in beta and this doc was last updated on May 7, 2018. This means that there may still be some bugs for us to iron out and we’re excited to hear your thoughts. If you are interested in joining or have any feedback to help us improve the IBM UBX Destination and its documentation, let us know!

Getting Started

NOTE: To enable Segment in UBX, navigate to “Endpoints” in the UBX dashboard, select “Register new endpoint”, then select “Segment”. Once you’ve added the Segment endpoint, contact Segment support with your new endpoint’s “endpoint authentication key” for help activating your new endpoint. Note that the endpoint in UBX will not be able to receive Segment data until you have enabled both the destination in the Segment UI *and* requested activation of the endpoint from Segment’s support team.

  1. From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
  2. Search for “IBM UBX” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
  3. Enter your UBX API URL and your publisher’s endpoint authentication key in the Segment Settings UI. You should have received an email with this URL shortly after setting up your UBX account. If you can’t locate your URL, contact UBX support (the URL is also referred to as a “base URL” in the IBM UBX documentation). To locate your endpoint authentication key, navigate to the “Endpoints” tab in UBX, then look to the far right where you’ll find three vertical dots. Click on them and select “Endpoint details”.
  4. Register and provision a Segment endpoint within your UBX dashboard so you can access the appropriate endpoint authentication key. Do this by navigating to “Endpoints”, then “Register a new endpoint” and select “Segment”. Then click “Register” to proceed.

    A screenshot of the UBX dashboard.

  5. Once registered, the new endpoint’s status will remain “Pending” in the “Endpoints” tab until it has been activated. To activate an endpoint, include your UBX account’s API URL and your endpoint authentication key in an email to Segment using our tech support form.

    A screenshot of the UBX Endpoints tab showing a Segment endpoint with a status of Active.

  6. Segment will activate your endpoint within 24 hours, at which time its status will update to “Active” in the UBX dashboard. Now, you can grab your endpoint authentication key again and paste it into your UBX settings in the Segment UI.

General Tracking Advice

We encourage customers to review UBX’s dynamic event library closely to become familiar with UBX’s specced events and properties. Many UBX consumers only accept specific events; likewise, many consumers function best when specific events include particular properties. Although Segment provides robust out-of-the-box mapping (documented below), we still recommend reviewing the dynamic event library closely to ensure that you are sending events and properties that enable you to get the most out of your UBX consumers.

Page

Page calls will send a ‘Page View Event’ to UBX (code ibmpageView). The below mappings may apply:

</table> _**Note:** As with `track` events, all properties sent by the user that aren't mapped above will be sent as attributes to UBX. To send a UBX-specced property that isn't mapped above, simply set the Segment property name to the UBX property code directly (e.g. `pageID`)._ Remember, you can find UBX-specific event and property codes in their dynamic event library. ## Track Segment's integration with UBX supports all public recognized UBX event types. Beware, however - UBX event destinations will only receive events to which they are subscribed. To subscribe a UBX destination to events from the Segment publisher, navigate to the "Events" tab and select "Subscribe to events". ![A screenshot of the UBX Events tab, with the Segment endpoint selected.](images/subscribe-to-events.png) Make sure that you subscribe your UBX event subscriber endpoints to the events you'd like them to consume from the Segment publisher. Note that while Segment supports all UBX-specced events, we have mapped the following Segment-specced events and their properties to their UBX equivalents: ### Event Mappings #### Mobile Events
Segment Property UBX Attribute Name
name siteID
Segment Event Name UBX Event Code
Application Backgrounded appSessionClose
Application Opened appSessionOpen
Application Installed appInstalled
Application Uninstalled appUninstalled
Application Crashed appCrashed
We do not define any specific mobile property mappings at this time given that Segment's spec and UBX's spec do not share closely related mobile properties. Note, you can still pass in any attribute codes as defined in UBX's dynamic event library, and Segment will pass these values downstream. #### Ecommerce Events
Segment Event Name UBX Event Code
Product Added cartAdd
Order Completed ibmcartPurchase
Product Viewed ibmproductView
Product Removed cartRemove
Products Searched ibmsearchedSite
Product Reviewed wroteReview
Attributes
Segment Property Name UBX Attribute Name
order_id orderID
total orderTotal
tax orderTax
discount orderDiscount
coupon orderPromo
products productList
cart_id orderID
product_id productID
name productName
price basePrice
url productURL
image_url imageURL
review_body review
#### Video Events
Segment Event Name UBX Event Code
Video Content Completed ibmelementVideoCompleted
Video Playback Started ibmelementVideoLaunched
Video Playback Paused ibmelementVideoPaused
Video Playback Resumed ibmelementVideoPlayed
Attributes
Segment Property Name UBX Attribute Name
position videoTimestamp
total_length videoTotalLength
#### Email Events
Segment Event Name UBX Event Code
Email Bounced emailBounce
Email Link Clicked emailClick
Email Opened emailOpen
Unsubscribed emailOptOut
Attributes
Segment Property Name UBX Attribute Name
email_subject subjectLine
list_id messageGroupId
list_name messageGroupName
link_url clickUrl
_**Note**: To send a UBX event or property that isn't mapped above, simply set the Segment event or property name to the UBX-specced event or property code directly (e.g. `opptyQualified`)._ Remember, you can find UBX-specific event and property codes in their dynamic event library. ### Property Mappings Segment also maps some properties from the context object to their equivalent UBX attributes. Note that UBX only supports a few data types - `string`, `number`, `boolean` and `date`. Segment will automatically discard any properties of a type not mentioned here, with the exception of objects, which we will attempt to stringify. If we cannot, expect to see `[object Object]` appear as the value in UBX.
Segment Property UBX Attribute Name
context.device.type deviceType
context.ip ip
context.location.latitude latitude
context.locale locale
context.location.city locationCity
context.location.country locationCountry
context.location.longitude longitude
context.device.manufacturer manufacturer
context.campaign.medium marketingSource
context.campaign.source mediaSource
context.device.model modelName
context.os.name OS
context.userAgent platform
context.os.version versionOS
(context.screen.width) * (context.screen.height) resolution
### Integration-Specific Option Mapping Segment maps the following integration-specific options to UBX:
integrations['ibm-ubx'].channel channel
integrations['ibm-ubx'].subChannel attributes.subChannel
integrations['ibm-ubx'].contactConsent attributes.contactConsent
An event containing all three integration-specific options may look something like this: ```javascript analytics.track('Order Completed' { // properties }, { integrations: { 'ibm-ubx': { channel: 'crm', subChannel: 'chat', contactConsent: 'email,opt-in' } } }) ``` It's important to note some information about precedent for each of these options: - `channel`: Segment first checks whether this value is defined in integration-specific options; if not and we detect `analytics-android` or `analytics-ios` libraries, `channel` is set to `mobile`; for all other libraries, `channel` is set to `web`. - `subChannel`: This value is not appended to the outgoing payload unless explicity defined by the user. - `ContactConsent`: This value is not appended to the outgoing payload unless explicity defined by the user. The value passed to Segment must be in the format `channel,subscriptionOption`. At the moment, the only acceptable channels are `email` and `sms`, and the only two acceptable subscription options are `opt-in` and `opt-out`. ## Troubleshooting ### Not seeing any data from Segment appear in UBX - Check to ensure your Segment publisher endpoint is "Active". If not, see [Getting Started](#getting-started) above. - Ensure you've subscribed your UBX destinations to the appropriate events. ## FAQ Segment does not auto-generate events other than an initial `page` call when using our Analytics.js library and mobile lifecycle events when mobile lifecycle tracking is enabled using Segment's Android or iOS library. This means some events supported and in some cases expected by downstream UBX destinations - including *abandonment events* - must be derived by the customer. One approach would be to integrate with a marketing tool such as [Braze](/docs/connections/destinations/catalog/braze/) or [Bronto](/docs/connections/destinations/catalog/bronto/), in which you can [set up rules that generate abandonment events](/docs/guides/destinations/how-do-i-automate-multi-channel-re-engagement-campaigns/#1st-line-of-defense-the-push-notification), which are then be sent back through Segment and downstream to UBX. Another approach may be to schedule a cron job in your database that checks for users who have triggered a `Product Added` event, but who never went on to trigger an `Order Completed` event. In this case, one can logically deduce that the user abandoned his cart, hence you should trigger a server-side Segment event based on this rule, which Segment will process and pass downstream to UBX. Segment's integration with UBX supports the following UBX abandonment events: - ibmabandonedConversion - ibmbrowseAbandonment - ibmbrowseAbandonmentItem - ibmcartAbandonment - ibmcartAbandonmentItem

Engage

You can send computed traits and audiences generated using Engage to this destination as a user property. To learn more about Engage, schedule a demo.

For user-property destinations, an identify call is sent to the destination for each user being added and removed. The property name is the snake_cased version of the audience name, with a true/false value to indicate membership. For example, when a user first completes an order in the last 30 days, Engage sends an Identify call with the property order_completed_last_30days: true. When the user no longer satisfies this condition (for example, it’s been more than 30 days since their last order), Engage sets that value to false.

When you first create an audience, Engage sends an Identify call for every user in that audience. Later audience syncs only send updates for users whose membership has changed since the last sync.

Real-time to batch destination sync frequency

Real-time audience syncs to IBM Universal Behavior Exchange may take six or more hours for the initial sync to complete. Upon completion, a sync frequency of two to three hours is expected.

Settings

Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.

Setting Description
API URL
(required)
string. Enter your UBX account’s base URL endpoint here. This can be found in the email you received from UBX after setting up your UBX account. It should have either the format https://`.ubx.ibmmarketingcloud.com/``/` or `https://``.goacoustic.com/``/`.
Authentication Key
(required)
string. You can find your endpoint’s Authorization Key by looking at your endpoint details in UBX. It should look something like eff08b68-0000-0000-9a19-8e43dbeeb201:US.

This page was last modified: 07 Aug 2024



Get started with Segment

Segment is the easiest way to integrate your websites & mobile apps data to over 300 analytics and growth tools.
or
Create free account