Conversation ID

Conversation participants are assigned IDs based on whether they've provided contact information or registered as a site member. The typical lifecycle is anonymous visitor > contact > site member, although it's possible to skip a step or to become a contact and site member at the same time.

Type	ID property	Details
Anonymous visitor	anonymousVisitorId	When the participant first opens the site, they're an anonymous visitor.
Contact	contactId	An anonymous visitor converts to a contact when they provide some contact information, such as a name, phone number, or email address. This most often happens when they submit a contact form, purchase something, or become a site member. When a visitor converts to a contact, they’re added to the site’s contact list.
Member	memberId	An anonymous visitor or contact becomes a member when they're registered as a site member. Members are always linked to a contact, so they have both a member ID and a contact ID.

Behind the scenes, when a participant changes type, a new conversation is created and the previous conversation is merged into the new one. Before sending a message, you can ensure you're using the most current conversation ID by calling getOrCreateConversation() with the participant's visitor, contact, or member ID.

The sections below tell you how you can get the relevant ID to use the Inbox API.

Anonymous visitor ID

Anonymous visitor IDs are not available through the Inbox API.

Contact ID

When a visitor provides contact details to the site, they're converted to a contact. Once this happens, the ID used to access the visitor's conversations changes to the contact ID.

You can use Query Contacts in the Contacts API to retrieve the contact.

Member ID

If the visitor is a site member, the conversation must be accessed using the member ID:

You can query the PrivateMembersData collection to retrieve the member.