Experience Analytics

Experience Analytics (Tealeaf) SDK for iOS, standard and mobile editions

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With the iOS SDK, you instrument your native and hybrid iOS applications for logging and analysis. It captures device context and user activity, so you can monitor and evaluate the performance of your applications.

The iOS SDK was designed for simple implementation: it uses standard iOS classes and user interface controls to track user interface events. Even without the framework, can monitor the traffic between your application and your server. With the framework, you get unprecedented insight into the performance of your application.

Requirements for iOS environments

To develop iOS applications effectively with iOS SDK, follow these system and software requirements:

  • Mac OS X 10.15 (or later)
  • Xcode 10.5 (or later)

Note:

Apple no longer supports armv6 devices. The framework is compatible with armv7 (or later) devices.

  • iOS bitcode is enabled in the iOS SDK and is built in 64 bit with latest Xcode version for the static library for the following architectures: arm64, armv7, armv7s, i386 and x86_64. For the dynamic versions, which are available on https://cocoapods.org/pods/IBMTealeaf, it only contains arm64, armv7, armv7s with bitcode enabled and, because of dynamic limitations, i386 and x86_64 with no bitcode. By Apple standards, you are not required to turn in i386 and x86_64 versions that are used only for simulator testing.

  • Consult the Apple iOS Dev Center for the most recent iOS technical documentation and tools.
    Acoustic Tealeaf client frameworks do not support forwarding of application data to third-party systems. Application data must be forwarded to the server that hosts the native application.
    Tealeaf has passed all Apple Store and Google Play Store regulations. If you encounter an issue with the Tealeaf library that is related to required scanning for Apple Store and Google Play Store, you can work directly with your Tealeaf services representative to resolve the issue.

Supported operating systems

  • iOS 11.0 (or later)
  • Single window (full screen) iPadOS apps are now supported. Multi-window iPadOS apps are not fully supported in this release. Multi-window iPadOS, SwiftUI, and UIScene are not fully supported at this time. The SDK will still capture data on a multi-window iPadOS app (or an app that uses SwiftUI or UIScene), but Session Replay might not work correctly. The recorded data can still be used for analytics and diagnostics.

Supported frameworks

The SDK can be integrated with iOS apps developed with the following frameworks.

Supported frameworks
Tealeaf sample code
Documentation

Ionic 3.0

https://github.com/ibm-watson-cxa/SampleCode_Tealeaf_iOS_CXAIonic_3

n/a

Cordova 7.0

https://github.com/ibm-watson-cxa/SampleCode_Tealeaf_iOS_CXACordova_7

Instrument Acoustic Tealeaf SDKs with a Cordova mobile application

React Native Framework

https://github.com/ibm-watson-cxa/CXA_react_native_module/tree/master/Example

Getting started with the Acoustic Tealeaf SDK for apps developed with the React Native Framework

Acoustic Experience Analytics (Tealeaf) iOS package contents

You can download the iOS package by following the SDK download instructions at Download the UIC, iOS, and Android SDKs The package contains three folders created for the Tealeaf iOS release.

  • EOCore folder - Contains Static Debug and Release of the base library that Tealeaf and Digital Analytics need to communicate with the server.
  • Tealeaf folder - Contains Static Debug and Release of the library that collect Tealeaf data that is passed to EOCore.
  • TLFImageTool folder - The TLFImageTool extracts local image resources and generates .png assets for the replay server to use with Native Replay.

Other folders you may find useful when using the Tealeaf iOS SDK are found here: https://github.com/ibm-watson-cxa.

Impact on device resources

In benchmark tests, the iOS SDK has the following effects on resources of the visitor's device:

  • 2 to 3% more memory consumption

Note:

If the server is unreachable, the SDK saves data to memory until the server is reachable. By default, the SDK will store up to 512,000 bytes to the device memory. If the cache grows larger than 512,000 bytes, the oldest data is truncated from cache and is deleted. The cache size is managed through the CachedFileMaxBytesSize setting in EOCoreAdvancedConfig.json.

  • Minimal effect on battery life

Note:

According to Apple, the API used to retrieve the battery level from the device can be out of sync with the value that displays on the device. The value is also updated in 5% increments only. See http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/14301-battery-level.htmlfor more information.

Environmental data

The framework automatically handles environmental data that is captured when the framework initializes, typically when your application starts, and at regular time intervals during execution. It also provides support for your application to report environmental data that needs special privacy attention or requires special frameworks.

Environmental data can be distributed among multiple hits.

  • Data that is captured when the framework initializes generally appears in one of the first hits of a session.
  • Data that is captured at regular time intervals appears along with events. Multiple values can be submitted in a single hit where the number of events is low.
  • Data that is captured by your application (location and carrier information) can appear at any time, independently or in hits with the other types of environmental data. Multiple values for a single hit can be submitted if your application makes multiple calls to the framework.

Captured at initialization

These values are captured one time per launch of your application when the framework initializes.

Environment data is collected based on a timer. Environment data related to initialization can be, but is not always, submitted on the first hit of the session. As environment data is passed through the framework, it is prioritized based on its logging level. The order that it is posted to the server and even whether it is posted to the server depends on the following.

  • Budgets for in-memory and local storage caches
  • Network packet size
  • The send level for the type of network available to the application

Note:

Data is not posted to the server in the order that it was captured.

Name
Description

pixelDensity

Value that is returned by [[UIScreen mainScreen] scale].

deviceWidth

Value that is returned by [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds].size.width.

deviceHeight

Value that is returned by [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds].size.height.

width

Value that is returned by pixelDensity*deviceWidth.

height

Value that is returned by pixelDensity*deviceHeight.

osVersion

Version of iOS running on the device.

totalStorage

Total storage on the device, free+used

totalMemory

Total memory of the device, free+used.

manufacturer

Apple Inc. on all iOS devices.

userID

Unique user ID generated by the iOS SDK for current instance of the application.

appVersion

Version of the iOS application.

deviceModel

Type of iPhone, iPad, and so on.

appName

Name of the current application.

orientationType

The orientation of the device (PORTRAIT, LANDSCAPE>, FLAT, or UNKNOWN).

locale

Current locale (for example, en).

language

Current language (for example, English).

osType

The type of device used during capture.

tag

All the controls on which you would like to create events must have unique ids. For example, if there is a text field for Total of prices of all the items in the cart, and on server you want to create an event for Total > 300, you should to assign unique ids to the text field control. This can be done by setting the tag property of the UIView.

Captured during execution

These values are captured at a regular time interval you can set for each logging level with TimeBetweenSnapshots in TLFLevelsConfiguration.plist

Note:

According to Apple, the API used to retrieve the battery level from the device is not always in sync with the value that displays on the device. In addition, the value is updated only in 5% increments. See http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/14301-battery-level.html for more information.

Name
Description

freeMemory

The memory that is remaining.

freeStorage

The storage that is remaining.

battery

The value that is returned by ( [UIDevice currentDevice].batteryLevel ) * 100.

carrier

The current network carrier.

networkReachability

The network status (Unknown, NotReachable, ReachableViaWiFi, or ReachableViaWWAN).

ip

The IP address of the device.

orientation

0 if [[UIDevice currentDevice] orientation] returns UIDeviceOrientationPortrait, UIDeviceOrientationFaceDown, or UIDeviceOrientationFaceUp.

90 if UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeRight

180 if UIDeviceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown

270 if UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft

Guidelines, tips, and best practices

Apply the following tips to your application development and integration of the Acoustic Tealeaf iOS SDK:

  • Use the killswitch to control logging of the iOS application
  • Add IDs for all UI controls that you want to capture
  • Apply privacy masking or blocking of all sensitive customer data through the iOS SDK
  • Due to the way JSON messages are captured and transmitted, force a submission of all queued messages before you allow users of your mobile native application to open a web view. If this step is not done, hits can appear to be out of order during replay in Acoustic Tealeaf.
  • In some cases, you might want to call TLFApplicationHelper's enableTealeafFramework conditionally. For example, you might want to conditionally make this call when you want to:
    • Enable Tealeaf on a range of operating system versions.
    • Enable Tealeaf only on iPhones.
    • Enable Tealeaf only on iPads.
    • Enable Tealeaf on both iPhones and iPads.
      For sample code, refer to the CXA ApplicationisValidOSVersionAndPlatform method in the AppDelegate.m file.

Here are some sample code examples:
Operating system versions

NSOperatingSystemVersion minVer = (NSOperatingSystemVersion)

{11, 0, 0};
NSOperatingSystemVersion maxVer = (NSOperatingSystemVersion){14, 0, 0};
NSOperatingSystemVersion skipVers[2] = {{11, 0, 0}
,{12, 1, 1}};

Devices 

if( (currentUIIdiom == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPhone) || (currentUIIdiom == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad) )

You can use the above code samples to get the version and device lists from your server, or if you find a better way or other improvements, contact Acoustic.

Tealeaf iOS SDK Tutorials

Relevant recipes and other tutorials

How do I implement conditional initialization with the UI Capture SDK?

Other related documentation for Experience Analytics (Tealeaf) and Digital Analytics

Updated 3 months ago

Experience Analytics (Tealeaf) SDK for iOS, standard and mobile editions

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