Creating a new activity

By default your account has system activities such as "Opened email" and may have activities from an integration you connected during the setup wizard e.g. Shopify activities. But you can also plan and create your own custom activities.

Once you have set up your activity, you need to implement it using the server-side (backend) or client-side (frontend) code snippets we provide. If an activity is set up but not implemented, it has a status of Setup, and has not yet had any events recorded against it.

Once implemented (when the first activity event occurs, via your website javascript or an API call), the activity will have a status of Live.

To begin creating a new Ortto activity:

1. On the Activities page, click New activity.
2. When you choose a template, click Use template to get started.
3. On the Setup page, select the API Data source you wish to use to create the activity.

   NOTE: The option to select an API data source for the activity only appears if you have more than 1 API data source in your account.
4. Specify an appropriate Activity name.
5. If you want to create the activity from the client side (e.g. within your website’s javascript), toggle ON Client-side data source. By default, activities are created using server-side languages (via API calls). Enabling client-side enables you to create activity events from the server side or client side — we provide code snippets for both.

   NOTE: Rate limits apply to client-side data source activity creation. For each activity (based on the activity_ID), we allow a maximum of:

   • 10 activity events per contact per day.
   • 100 activity events per hour, per activity IP address (source_IP).

   
6. Choose an appropriate Icon.
7. In the Attributes section, specify any data fields (i.e. attributes) required to store information about
   this activity. For each attribute:
   1. Specify an appropriate Attribute name and Data type.
   2. To map the activity to an appropriate person field in your Ortto account’s customer data platform (CDP), choose the appropriate person field from the Map value to CDP drop-down list.

   NOTE:

   • Only existing person fields (whose data type matches the Data type you chose in the previous step) will appear in this list.
   • You can create a new custom person field to be mapped to this attribute by clicking Create new in this list. Doing so opens the Create field dialog, similar to when you create a new person custom field through the Settings > Customer data > Fields page, although the Field type and Data type (above) values must match before your custom activity can be successfully created.
8. Choose whether to activate the Conversion value and Track as touch options for this activity.

   NOTE: Activating the Conversion value sets an internal attribute value (referred to as Value), such that if this activity were used for attribution purposes, it uses this internal Value field for attribution, including MRR and ARR.
9. Choose the Visibility options for your custom activity.
10. Choose the Activity design options for your custom activity, bearing in mind that you will need to define at least one attribute (above) for the Activity and attribute option.
11. Click Next.
12. On the Implementation page:
    • Select I’m getting technical help to send the implementation instructions to the person (such as your team’s developer) who will implement the activity creation. If you enabled Client-side data source during Settings, we will send code snippets for both server-side and client-side. Otherwise, we will just send snippets for server-side implementation. Or,
    • Select I’m doing it myself to be provided with the code snippets you need to implement the activity. If you enabled Client-side data source during Settings, you will see code snippets for both server-side and client-side. Otherwise, you will just see snippets for server-side implementation.
13. Click Done to exit the activity setup.