What is the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Mobile SDK?
The other day I was shopping on a company’s application and added an item to the cart that I was thinking about buying. I decided not to make the purchase and closed out of the application. Later, I received an email reminding me about the item that I had added to the cart. The next time I opened the application I also received a message reminding me that I had an item in my cart and was given the option to click a button and be taken directly to my cart. Have you ever wondered how any of this is possible? When the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) is successfully integrated into a company’s application, all the scenarios I explained above are possible with SAS Customer Intelligence 360. The purpose of this blog is to give a brief description of what the mobile SDK is, provide examples of business requirements that should be discussed, and provide resources on how to successfully configure a mobile application to meet the business requirements.
What is in the Mobile SDK and How to Access it?
The mobile SDK for SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is a supporting package of files and libraries that provide capabilities for event collection (i.e. tracking that I added something to a cart) and content distribution (i.e. sending me notifications to remind me about the item in the cart) to take place on a mobile application.
SAS Customer Intelligence 360 provides support for native mobile apps such as Android and iOS. When downloaded, the mobile SDK is a ZIP file that contains both the iOS and Android SDKs.
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The iOS mobile SDK for Customer Intelligence 360 is an iOS framework that is a directory of files such as headers, binaries, and resource files in a particular order.
The Android mobile SDK is a self-contained Java Library in the form of a JAR file.
In addition to native mobile applications, the mobile SDK can be integrated with the hybrid platforms Flutter, React, and Xamarin. Hybrid platforms allow a mobile app developer to create both iOS and Android applications at the same time using only one coding language.
The mobile SDK for SAS Customer Intelligence can be accessed from two places. First, the user interface of SAS Customer Intelligence 360. Second, through public repositories that can be included in an application’s source code while the mobile SDK is being installed.
Collaboration about Business Requirements
Mobile app developers install the mobile SDK with their company’s applications. However, before the installation takes place there are business decisions that need to be made. These decisions are usually made by a marketer. They can then be communicated to the mobile app developer who can then configure the application to meet the business needs.
Although it is not an exhaustive list, the following business requirements need to be determined ideally before the mobile SDK is integrated with the mobile application:
- Deciding which events to collect needs to be determined. Events are used to track customer behavior. They can include preconfigured events such as a product view or add to cart events (such as my example in the introduction to this blog). They can also include custom events.
- Next, deciding where to put spots in the mobile application. These are portions of the application that will display content to the user of the app.
- Next, defining links that will take a user to a specific spot in the application. For example, when I opened up the company’s application in the example in the beginning of this blog, I received a push notification reminding me about the item in my cart. I was then able to click a button that would take me directly to the cart page rather than navigating to the home page of the application.
Installation and Business Requirement Configuration
Once the business requirements have been determined the mobile app developer can install the mobile SDK and configure their mobile application to meet the business requirements.
The mobile SDK for Android and for iOS applications can both be installed manually. For Android applications, a dependency to a maven repository can be added to the application to install the Customer Intelligence 360 mobile SDK. For iOS applications, the mobile SDK can be set up by using Swift Package Manager to add a public GitHub repository to the Xcode project.
In addition to setting up events, spots, and links the mobile application needs to be configured for mobile messages. The mobile app developer registers the mobile app with Apple Push Notification Services for iOS and Firebase Cloud Messaging for android devices. The mobile SDK can support in-app messages, and push notifications (for the difference between in-app messages and push notifications see the blog SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Mobile App Messages).
Detailed instructions on how to configure the mobile SDK can be found in the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Developers Guide for Mobile Applications.
Where to Learn More
In addition to the documentation, I am currently developing the SAS Customer Intelligence 360: Mobile SDK course. This course delves into more detail about what the mobile SDK is, and how to configure a mobile application with the mobile SDK. Once finished this course will be accessible from the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Learning Subscription.
