User Model

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Guidance

We advise existing customers who are migrating from our device-centric model to the new user-centric APIs and SDKs to go through testing before releasing the update to production. Please refer to our

The new User Model enables you to create personalized engagement journeys for individual users rather than targeting users based on the channels to which they subscribe. This shift from channel-based to individualized targeting enables you to communicate more effectively and precisely with users through their applications, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and engagement. The User Model helps you optimize your strategies and improve your overall customer experience by providing greater flexibility and precision in customer engagement.

With the shift to a user-centric approach, there are many additional benefits. We are now syncing properties (more on that below) from subscriptions up to a user level, allowing you to leverage channel-specific data at an individual level from a messaging and segment-building standpoint.

Migrating to User Model

Please check out our migration guide here: User Model Migration Guide

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Integrations support coming soon for User Model

If you are using any Integrations with OneSignal, please check to see if the integration is supported for User Model before migrating your production applications: User Model Supported Integrations.

Please do not migrate to User Model if you are using an integration with OneSignal that is not supported.

Users

A user is an individual who may subscribe to different messaging channels for your application. The User will become the backbone of our product model, empowering you to understand your users’ behavior holistically rather than at the channel level as with Players.

User entities comprise Alias IDs from other applications, integrations, and subscriptions representing the channels they have chosen to engage.

More details can be found here: Users.

Subscriptions

A subscription is a channel for which users have opted to receive messages. A subscription’s history is maintained even if a user opts out of the channel, in which case, the subscription’s status is set to unsubscribed.

More details can be found here: Subscriptions

Channels

• Mobile & Web Push Notifications
• SMS
• Email
• In-app Message

Aliases

Aliases are custom labels that you can use to identify a user and enable you to, for example, specify a user with their Mixpanel or Facebook ID. All Aliases can be used to tie together subscriptions to a specific user within OneSignal.

More details can be found here: Aliases & External ID

Special aliases

Aliases that are permitted to log in, merge, and perform other client-side operations.

• onesignal_id - automatically provisioned and managed by OneSignal
• external_id (formerly known as external_user_id) - provided by customers who pass a value into login function.

Regular aliases

Aliases used in integrations with supported vendors as an additional identification point for a user.

Limitations for User Model Release

Some Integrations (User Model Supported Integrations) and Identity Verification are not supported in this Release.