Discussion - Promotions
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So I'm studying the way Promotions work, and I have questions for a couple of issues I have and things I don't see clearly addressed in the official documentation, I'll list them below:
- Can Users have more than one promotion active at the same time?
- In the case of automated promotions, what products count towards the "max purchase" limit? If I have a product with the price left "as is" in the Prices list inside that Promotion, does it get counted? More info on this max purchase field would be appreciated.
- I have two automated promotions enabled and a User is in the segments used by both, but I don't see them when using the GetElegiblePromotions call. Is this a refresh issue? And if so how do I force a refresh to see them immediately?
- If I have a promotion active where a product is set "not for sale", I don't see that product in the app store, which is the expected behaviour. What if I have another promotion active at the same time where that product is set as available? What if the same thing happens but in promotion #1 the product is "as is" and in promotion #2 it's set with another price value?
Generally speaking the way promotions are set up meet the requirements of our apps, but more clarity and better documentation would be nice, for example I see that for scheduled promotions each field has a description of what it does and is used for, but it's not the same for the automated ones.
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Hi Francesco,
Thanks for reaching out. Certainly our screens and documentation for Promotions could use some more love - we are working on that.
To answer your questions:
Can Users have more than one promotion active at the same time?
Yes. And in that case, the "lowest" price for an item wins.In the case of automated promotions, what products count towards the "max purchase" limit? If I have a product with the price left "as is" in the Prices list inside that Promotion, does it get counted? More info on this max purchase field would be appreciated.
Hmm - I'm putting a question into the devs on this one.I have two automated promotions enabled and a User is in the segments used by both, but I don't see them when using the GetElegiblePromotions call. Is this a refresh issue? And if so how do I force a refresh to see them immediately?
Automated promotions are tricky - as a user must "ENTER" the segment to trigger the promotion. If they are already a member of the segment at the time the promotion is created, the automated promotion will not trigger. We are currently improving the user promotions screens to better communicate this behavior - and make it easier to test.If I have a promotion active where a product is set "not for sale", I don't see that product in the app store, which is the expected behaviour. What if I have another promotion active at the same time where that product is set as available?
What do you mean "as available" - with a particular price? If you mean "as is" I'm pretty sure that "Not for sale" will win - and the product will not being shown.What if the same thing happens but in promotion #1 the product is "as is" and in promotion #2 it's set with another price value?
Lowest price wins. If promotion #2 is less than the "as is" price than it should be the one shown.I hope that helps - we'll chime in with more clarifications once I have them from the devs.
Paul.
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Thank you for the quick reply. You got it right for your What do you mean "as available" clarification, thank you for the answer.
I generally have a clearer idea now, but at this point I believe I have an issue with automated promotions:Yesterday I created a new segment for users with a login count greater or equal than 20, and an automated promotion that triggers for users that enter that segment. The User I'm using met the required login count this morning, but that promotion still isn't available for him. I have an active scheduled promotion that works just fine and I'm able to get its data from Braincloud, it's just the automated ones that are causing problems.
We're using BC for a game made with Unity, I don't know if this info is useful but if you need more data on our project I'd be happy to share it with you, in the meantime I'll wait for the rest of the clarifications, thank you in advance.
Francesco.
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Hi everyone, I managed to get an automated promotion to show up on my User.
The automated promotion had a duration of 100000, it was an exaggerated value to just have it always available, and after setting it to 8 it immediately showed up on my User's elegible promotions list.
It seems like the max duration accepted by the system is 596 hours.I don't remember seeing a reference to a max duration on the official documentation, can you tell me more about this?
Francesco.
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@francesco-lenolli
Excellent observation! You are correct. Our server-side validation was set to filter out any duration above 596 hours and mark it as "expired". However, we have thoroughly reviewed this validation and have since removed it. This patch will be deployed to our server today, meaning a duration limit will no longer exist. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Thank you.
