iBeacons
iBeacons are at the core of the support of indoor location services. There are several manufacturers of beacons that as long as they abide by the standard protocol are supported by the Campaign Manager.
Please check with your Administrator for verified support of any specific manufacturer. Homologated beacons are listed by the Administrator under the Manufacturer field.
Beacons use Bluetooth low energy proximity sensing to transmit a universally unique identifier (see UUID field below) picked up by the Campaign Manager SDK embedded in any app.
The identifier, in conjunction with Major and Minor, are used by the Campaign Manager to determine the mobile device's physical location, and based on the configuration, trigger a location-based action.
Beacons are configured as an Interactive Campaign, in which entering or exiting the proximity of the beacon serves as trigger to the configured campaign:
The configuration of the beacon has several parts:
- Univocal identification of the desired beacon by its UUID, major, and minor
- Campaign to be activated upon the established trigger
- Trigger event
- Advanced options common to all interactive type campaigns
Configuration Fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Name that will uniquely identify the beacon. Try to be as mnemonic as possible as there could be a very high number of beacons configured. Please use a concise name and avoid special characters |
| Title | Is the name of the campaign to be activated. Please follow the guidelines as in any other interactive campaign exposed to mobile users |
| Event | Specifies whether the campaign will be activated upon the mobile user entering (Enter), exiting (Exit), or both entering and exiting (Enter-Exit) |
| Distance | Depending on the use of the beacon it may be necessary to specify the distance from it at which to trigger the campaign. Immediate, use this when by the nature of the use case requires the mobile device to be touching (or almost touching) the beacon. Payment and some security use cases are examples of this case. Near: this case is used when several beacons are in the same area, close to each other, and you do not want one to interfere with another. This is the case for example at a retail store where more than one beacon is providing information to visiting customers. Far, use this in cases where there is only one beacon in the area, or they are very far apart. By the nature of all location services, these parameter will not be 100% exact and will always need some level of trial and error type testing to determine the best possible configuration. |
| UUID | Universally Unique Identifier is an alphanumeric value that identifies one or more beacons as a certain type, or from a certain manufacturer. Check the beacon manufacturer documentation for this value |
| Major | Is a number used to group related beacons that have the same proximity UUID. Check the beacon manufacturer documentation for this value |
| Minor | Is a number used to group related beacons that have the same proximity UUID and Major. Check the beacon manufacturer documentation for this value |
| Text/Campaign | Select text when you simply wish to configure a message sent to the mobile user, or campaign is you want to select the activation of a previously configured campaign. In this latter case you will need to select the campaign from the available field |
Advanced Options
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Starts on | By default Now is checked. Uncheck the Now option to schedule the delivery for a later date and time. |
| Availability | Build the shipment planning rules. By default shipment is allowed every day of the week at any time. For more details see Availability Schedule. |
| Limited Delivery | Check the difference between the actual date and the date of the last event of one device in a region. If the Time is higher than the difference then don't send a notification. |
