Solved

Cleaning up customers from Google's & Apple's automated tests

  • 7 December 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 72 views
twestrick
Badge +6

I am wondering how do others handle cleaning up customers that are created when Google and Apple run their automated tests during a new app version’s approval process. They definitely skew the dashboard numbers in RevenueCat.

My app is using a defined App User Id so I am thinking of exporting all customers and deleting all customers with an Anonymous App User ID (starting with “$RCAnonymousID:”).

Thoughts? Any issues with deleting customers with an Anonymous App User ID?

icon

Best answer by sharif 9 December 2022, 19:34

View original

4 replies

sharif
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

If you can accurately pinpoint the user that the reviewers are using, then there shouldn’t be any harm in deleting those users. Just be careful not to delete any of your real anonymous users! Depending on how you built your app, you may have legitimate users who have anonymous IDs (anonymous IDs are generated if you call configure without an app user ID or you call logout.)

 
One thing you can do is provide an account to Apple App Review to use - that way their purchases will be limited to one known account. I'm not sure how you do this with Google, but if they have a similar process you can also do that there.

Sharif
twestrick
Badge +6

Our app sets the user’s defined App Id upon login so they should never have purchases against an Anonymous Id. I think all the Anonymous Ids are getting created when Google/App just launch the app and login never happens. I haven’t checked, but would assume the exported customer list has some sort of flag that denotes if there have been any purchases for them. So, I would only delete Anonymous Ids that don’t have any purchases.

I know Google has a spot to enter credentials as well. But, like I mentioned, so far all the Ids are from their automated testing that never goes past the login screen in our app. They probably have hundreds of devices so new Ids are constantly being created. We haven’t even launched our app yet and we already have over 50 customers mostly Anonymous. Can’t get the actual number since Customer Lists are not working atm 😂

I am assuming there is no way around this right? We have to call Initialize when the app starts so we can get subscription plans/pricing for our welcome screens before login/account creation.

sharif
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge +9

I think all the Anonymous Ids are getting created when Google/App just launch the app and login never happens.

 

Yes that is common especially on Android because Google has an automated system for testing.

 

I am assuming there is no way around this right? We have to call Initialize when the app starts so we can get subscription plans/pricing for our welcome screens before login/account creation.

 

If this is really getting in the way of your workflow you can delay calling initialize until after the user passes the login screen to limit the number of anonymous user IDs that are created. But as you said, it may delay fetching offerings and products.

 

Can’t get the actual number since Customer Lists are not working atm 😂

 

That doesn’t sound good! Are you sure it’s not just a cache? The dashboard will refresh customer lists every couple of hours so you may need to check back in later. Also make sure your filters are correctly set - customer lists default to only customers with purchases, so you may need to disable that on the list you’re viewing.

Sharif
twestrick
Badge +6

Awesome! I appreciate those details.

The customer lists were just not working due to this outage. They are good now and we currently have 210 customers that aren’t real 😄 Right now I am not going to worry about it but after we launch I might look at creating a script or something to clean them up on a regular basis.

Thank you for the help!

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings