Airship

Airship is an app experience platform that lets you create and deliver powerful in-app experiences with the help of engaging, personalized content and actionable customer insights.

RudderStack supports Airship as a destination to which you can seamlessly send your event data.

Find the open source transformer code for this destination in the GitHub repository.

Connection compatibility

Destination Information
Status: Generally Available Supported sources: Android (Java) , Android (Kotlin) , iOS (Obj-C) , iOS (Swift) , Web, Unity, AMP , Cloud, React Native , Flutter, Cordova, Warehouse, Shopify Refer to it as Airship in the Integrations object.

Connection Modes
Source	Cloud mode	Device mode	Hybrid mode
AMP
Android (Java)
Android (Kotlin)
Cloud
Cordova
Flutter
iOS (Obj-C)
iOS (Swift)
React Native
Shopify
Unity
Warehouse
Web

Supported Message Types
Source	Identify	Page	Track	Screen	Group	Alias	Record	AudienceList
Cloud mode
Supported sources

Get started

You must install the Airship SDK on your website/app to use this integration successfully. See the Airship documentation for more information on setting up the Airship SDK on your preferred platform.

Also, note that:

• Before sending events to Airship through RudderStack, make sure to first create the channel and named user in Airship via the Airship SDK.
• RudderStack supports enhancing the existing user profiles and sending custom events in cloud mode.

Setup

1. In your RudderStack dashboard, add a source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Airship.
2. Assign a name to your destination and click Next.

Connection settings

Identify

The identify call lets you uniquely identify a user and record any associated traits about them like their name, email, etc.

A sample identify call is shown below:

rudderanalytics.identify("1hKOmRA4el9Zt1WSfVJIVo4GRlm", {
  likes_movies: true,
  favorite_color: "purple",
  age: 13
});

In the above code snippet, RudderStack sends the Boolean values to Airship as tags, whereas the non-Boolean values are sent as attributes.

RudderStack maps some reserved traits to the predefined Airship attributes. See the Traits mapping section below for more information.

Tags

To successfully assign tags to Airship using the RudderStack identify events, you must create a tag group with the group key set to rudderstack_integration in Airship.

Note that this integration supports identify traits of Boolean data type only. Airship adds tags for the traits that are set to true and removes tags for the traits set to false.

Attributes

For identify traits that are not mapped to any predefined or custom-defined Airship attributes, you must create and enable those attributes in the Airship dashboard.

Track

The track call lets you capture user events along with the properties associated with them.

RudderStack sends the track events to Airship via their Custom Events API. You can use the event properties to personalize and trigger specific messages for your audience.

You need the Airship project’s App Key for authenticating the track calls.

A sample track call is shown below:

rudderanalytics.track("Product Clicked", {
  description: "Shoes viewed",
  brand: "Sneakers",
  colors: ["red", "blue"],
  items: [
    {
      text: "New Balance Sneakers",
      price: "$69.95"
    },
    {
      text: "G.I. Joe Sneakers",
      price: "$99.95"
    }
  ]
});

In the above snippet, the event name Product Clicked is automatically converted to product_clicked before sending to Airship.

The event name sent to Airship must not contain any upper case characters. Otherwise, Airship rejects it with a 400 status code.

RudderStack handles this scenario internally by converting any upper case characters to lower case and replacing any spaces with an underscore(_).

RudderStack also maps some event properties to the Airship properties before sending them over to Airship. See the Supported mappings section below for more information.

Group

The group call lets you link an identified user with a group such as a company, organization, or an account, and record any traits associated with that group, e.g., company name, number of employees, etc.

A sample group call is shown below:

rudderanalytics.group("5ea6247", {
  name: "Company Inc.",
  in_tecnology_domain: true,
  plan: "basic"
})

In the above code snippet, RudderStack sends the Boolean values to Airship as tags and the non-Boolean values as attributes.

To successfully assign tags to Airship using the RudderStack group events, you must create a tag group with the group key set to rudderstack_integration_group in Airship. Similarly, you need to create the relevant attribute identifiers in Airship to set the attributes for the named users.

This integration supports group traits of type Boolean only. Airship adds tags for the traits that are set to true and removes tags for the traits set to false.

Supported mappings

RudderStack maps the following event properties to the Airship properties before sending them over to Airship.

See the Airship documentation for more information on how the externally-generated custom events are mapped.

Traits mapping

Send user traits of array type

In case of the identify and group events, RudderStack supports sending user traits of string and integer types via the traits object, by default.

You can also send traits of array data type by including them in the event’s integrations object. For example, to send the below traits to Airship:

{
  ...
  "traits": {
    ...
    "widget_notifications": [
      "widget1_clicked",
      "widget2_viewed"
    ],
    ...
  }
}

Include them in the event’s integrations object within the JSONAttributes key in the <attribute_id>#<instance_id> format, as shown:

{
  ...
  "integrations": {
    "All": true,
    "Airship": {
      "JSONAttributes": {
          "widget_notifications#r0123": [
            "widget1_clicked",
            "widget2_viewed"
          ]
      }
    }
  },
}

RudderStack leverages Airship’s Attributes assignment API to send these attributes.

You can also remove any attributes by specifying them in the integrations object within the removeAttributes key, as shown:

{
  ...,
  "integrations": {
    "All": true,
    "Airship": {
      "removeAttributes": [
        "widget_notification1",
        "widget_notification2"
      ]
    }
  },
}

FAQ

Where can I find the Airship API key?

RudderStack requires the Airship API key to communicate with your Airship project. This is a mandatory field to set up the integration.

1. In your Airship dashboard, go to Settings.
2. In the Project configuration window, go to Tokens and click Manage.
3. Click Create token.
4. Assign a name for your token. Under Role, select All access from the dropdown:

5. Once the token is created, copy and secure the credentials and click Got it.

Where can I obtain the Airship App Key?

1. In your Airship dashboard, go to Settings.
2. In the Project configuration window, look for the Project Details pane on the right side. You will find your project’s app key listed here.

How do I create a custom tag group in Airship?

1. Go to Settings > Project configuration > Tag Groups and click Manage.

2. Click Create Tag Group and enter the following settings:

   • Name: Enter the name for the tag group.
   • Description: Set additional information about the tag group in this field.
   • Group Key: Assign a unique ID for the tag group in this field. For example, to assign tags using the RudderStack identify events, you can set this to rudderstack-integration. For assigning tags using the group events, set this to rudderstack-integration-group.

See the Airship documentation for more information.

How do I create and enable attributes in Airship?

For identify traits that are not mapped to any predefined or custom-defined Airship attributes, you must create and enable those attributes in the Airship dashboard.

1. Go to your Airship dashboard.
2. Navigate to Audience > Attributes.
3. Click Create Attribute.
4. Enter the Attribute ID, Name, and select the attribute Type.
5. Finally, click Add.