What is Messenger Session Persistence and how does it work?

The session persistence method set on your Messenger Configuration determines the behavior that occurs when your customer navigates across subdomains of your website and the same Messenger deployment is present.

The session persistence method applies to all areas of the Messenger including but not limited to:

  • Web messaging conversations
  • Co-browse sessions
  • Journey sessions
  • Knowledge sessions

Changes to this selection impact the active session. 

  • When you configure Messenger to Persist session across subdomains, Messenger continues the session when navigating across subdomains of your website and the same Messenger deployment is present.
  • When you configure Messenger to Limit session to starting subdomain (or domain), Messenger treats the customer as a new session when they navigate to a new subdomain of your website and the same Messenger deployment is present. If the customer then navigates back to their original subdomain, their original session resumes, assuming the session is still active.
    Note: If you created your Messenger configuration before October 2024, it most likely uses this selection.

Examples of cross-subdomain navigation:

  • Brand.com to Myaccount.Brand.com
  • Myaccount.Brand.com to Support.Brand.com
  • Support.Brand.com to Brand.com

Note:
  • Cross-subdomain persistence is not supported when the users of Messenger use Safari browser with default settings. To persist sessions across subdomains, ensure the Prevent cross-site tracking setting is disabled. If this default Safari setting remains enabled, Messenger will be available but sessions will not persist across subdomains and will not survive a browser quit or device restart. Apple applies its tracking prevention policies to the Safari browser, by default. See Apple tracking prevention policy. 
  • There is no current support for persisted sessions when moving across domains. The domain must always match.

All active sessions on your Messenger deployment terminate when the deployment begins to use a changed session persistence method. All customers are presented with a new session the next time Messenger loads. Genesys recommends that you only change session persistence during off-hours for your business.

The session persistence method determines the location where Messenger-related identifiers and data are stored in the browser’s local storage.

  • With Persist session across subdomains, this data is stored within the Genesys Cloud domain that provides Messenger.
  • With Limit session to starting subdomain (or domain), this data is stored within your brand domain where Messenger deploys.

No, Mobile Messenger always uses the native mobile OS storage.