utag_main_ses_id expiration

[audrey_poulin]

Hi, I cannot find this information anywhere. The only explanation for the Tealium session ID i can find is " A unique identifier for the session.".

So what is the expiration of the ses_id cookie? How is it defined exactly for each session? 

Thanks,

Audrey

[dan_george]

Here is a typical cookie value of utag_main

utag_main=v_id:0158c13e6db8001dcb119f9bf6e805078002907000fb8
$_sn:1
$_ss:1
$_st:1480712643834
$ses_id:1480710843834%3Bexp-session
$_pn:1%3Bexp-session
$dc_visit:1
$dc_event:1%3Bexp-session
$dc_region:us-east-1%3Bexp-session

ses_id expires at the end of the session.

At a high level, we look to see if this cookie exists and if not, we know it's the beginning of the session and create it. If it does exists then we do nothing which means it's an active session.

[craig_rouse · Accepted solution]

Good info from @dan_george. 1 further piece of information you might find useful is that the session id is reset after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Here are some examples, @audrey_poulin:

Browse for 1 hour, leave, and return 30 minutes later - this would be 2 sessions (2 separate "ses_id" values)
Browse for 10 minutes, leave, and return 30 minutes later for another 20 minutes - 2 sessions (2 separate "ses_id" values)

[audrey_poulin]

Hi @craig_rouse, yes, this is the information I was looking for.

And when you say that the cookie is reset after 30 minutes of inactivity, that means that if a user comes to the website, browses for 10 minutes, doesn't do anything for 40 minutes but left his browser on and clicks on a link on-site after that 40 minutes, this would count as 2 sessions, correct?

Also, if a user comes to the website for 10 minutes, leaves and comes back after 20 minutes, and then browses for another 5, this would count as one session?

[dan_george]

Hi @audrey_poulin both of the examples your state are correct. 

[kathleen_jo]

Hello @audrey_poulin. We just added information regarding session time criteria here: 

• https://community.tealiumiq.com/t5/Universal-Data-Hub/Using-Attributes/ta-p/11926

Thank you and let us know if you have any other questions!

[audrey_poulin]

Thanks, that's good to know, although I would never have thought to look in the Audience Stream documentation for a Tealium IQ cookie question.

To be honest, this article: https://community.tealiumiq.com/t5/Tealium-iQ-Tag-Management/Tealium-Cookies/ta-p/138 is more where the session cookie should be better defined. It's really necessary to know when cookies expire since we may use those values in other tools that don't have the same definition of sessions or visitors.

[FR0619-020]

Hello Tealium Community,

Could you please tell us if this ID is Unique ?

Could it be possible that 2 sessions have the same ID ?

Cheers,

[jcertain]

+1 I need that information as well: how is the session ID calculated and is it possible to exist twice within a given time-period eg.: 1 year? @craig_rouse

[tculetto]

Reading the utag.js code directly, the session id is a just a timestamp tracking when someone landed on the page without a valid session in the cookie (after more than 30 mins). So theoretically two users arriving at the exact same time in milliseconds could be assigned the same session_id. We don't use that for any purposes than general tracking of user's sessions as far as I know.

RDses: function(o, a, c) {
a = (new Date()).getTime();//this is where the session is calculated
c = (a + parseInt(utag.cfg.session_timeout)) + "";
if (!o["cp.utag_main_ses_id"]) {
o["cp.utag_main_ses_id"] = a + "";
o["cp.utag_main__ss"] = "1";
o["cp.utag_main__sn"] = (1 + parseInt(o["cp.utag_main__sn"] || 0)) + "";
.....