Page segments for context-based content

About page segmentation

Page segmentation lets you show content types or track task success only on specific URLs. 

Why use it

The benefits of page segmentation include the following:

• Targeted Content: Page segmentation allows you to show specific Guides, tooltips, and tags only on relevant URLs, providing users with content tailored to their needs.
• Improved User Experience: By displaying content relevant to a particular section or process, page segmentation enhances the overall user experience, making it more intuitive and streamlined.
• Easy Customization: Page segmentation eliminates the need for implementing complex code. For example, you can easily customize and control the visibility of your Tooltips or Tags without requiring technical expertise.
• Flexibility and Adaptability: Page segments can be easily created and modified, allowing you to adapt your content to your application's URL structure changes.
• Enhanced Assistant Experience: Page segmentation affects the behavior of the Userlane Assistant, including the icon displaying the number of uncompleted Guides, providing users with a seamless and personalized assistant experience.

Understand your problem

You can add any patterns of the URL to the page segment:

To understand which pattern you need, first, create a concept by trying to answer the following questions:

• Should your content be shown everywhere?
  • Example: The Userlane Assistant can be hidden on the login page
• Do you want to show specific content per section of the underlying app?
  • Example: Show a particular set of guides in the Profile section and another set of Guides in the Opportunity section of your application.
• Are there specific parts of a process that need some further explanations?
  • Example: Use page segments if you wish to show specific content on the landing page of a marketing campaign.
• Do you want to test your content before pushing it to the production environment?
  • Example: Segment your content to be shown only on the test environment for testing purposes. After, change the page segment of the respective content, and make it available to the production environment.

How to create a page segment 

Access page segmentation

Access the Portal to create the page segment: Portal > Segments > Page Segments

Create a page segment

Overall, there are three ways in which you can create a page segment:

• Use path parameters (everything after the first slash "/")
  • Example: use users to ensure the content is available only in the users section of your underlying app.
• Use (sub)domain name and path parameters
  • Example: use test.mycompany.com/users when you want to ensure that the content is available only on your test property in the users section
• Use (sub)domain name
  • Example: assign customer-id.mycompany.com page segment to a Chapter with Guides to ensure that only that customer can access the respective content.

You can then decide either to show the content on a page or hide the content on a page. 

Advanced cases

There are two functionalities that you can use to customize your page segment further:

• when you have varying parts in a URL between 2 unique parts, you can use asterisks (*) - an asterisk acts as a wildcard. For example: customer-*.mycompany.com or mycompany.com/users=*/profile
• use the "plus" sign to connect multiple conditions with a logical OR.

How to apply a page segment

Depending on the content you wish to segment, you may need to apply it in the Portal (for Announcements, Chapters, Guides, Assistant, Welcome Slide) or in the Editor (for Tooltips and Tags).

Delete a page segment

Segments that are in use can’t be deleted. If you want to delete a page segment, you must remove the applied segmentation first.

To check if a page segment is in use, access Portal > Segments. In the segments table, you can check whether a content type is connected to a segment with the help of the Usage column.

Page Segmentation rules

The rules can be summarized in the following way:

• subdomain, domain, and domain suffix support for page segments
  • wildcard support for subdomains has been added
  • the domain and domain suffix must be added to the page segment rule. If only one is added (e.g. .com), Userlane will look only at matching path parameters
  • wildcards are not supported for domains and domain suffixes. If you use mycompany.* , then Userlane will look only at matching path parameters
• The security protocol (https and http), IPs, and port numbers are ignored and not considered in the segmentation rule.
• If you add path parameters after the domain name, the accessed URL must fully match the page segment's rule.
  • if only path parameters are added to the page segment rule (without the domain name), then partial match logic is used.
• If you work only with one domain, you can use only path parameters to segment your content.
  • You can use wildcards for path parameters

Examples: old logic vs new logic

Considerations

• Page Segments applied for a whole chapter will affect every Guide within this chapter. 

• If you apply another page segment for a Guide within this chapter, the chapter and Guide segment will be connected with a logical AND for this Guide.

• A chapter will no longer be visible on general pages if all the Guides within it are only visible on specific pages.

• The icon in the Userlane Assistant (showing the number of Guides uncompleted in a chapter) varies depending on the active page segmentation. It shows the number of uncompleted Guides in the first uncompleted chapter.