Session Recording FAQ’s

1. What are Recordings in VWO and how do they work?
   Recordings in VWO allow you to record visitor interactions with your website in a form of video. These recordings show how users interact with your website, by capturing their mouse movements, scrolls, and clicks. They work on the basis of sampling. 
   
   
2. What is the maximum duration of the saved recording?
   The maximum duration of a session for which recordings will be captured is 2 hours with a maximum of 20 page views. If the duration exceeds 2 hours or the page views goes beyond 20 pages, no new data will be recorded in the current session.
   
3. When does a recording start?
   A visitor needs to spend a minimum of  5 seconds in a session for the recording to be seen in the VWO dashboard.
   
4. When does a recording session expire?
   A recording session expires after 30 minutes of idle time. For example, if a visitor is idle for 30 minutes, the current recording session ends. Post this, a new recording session starts. The session also expires when the respective tab or the browser window is closed.
   
5. Can I view all the Recordings of the previous/next previous session of the user?
   Yes. A tile in the player shows the currently active session of the visitor along with how many sessions that recorded sessions of the visitor is available. When clicking the tile, a sidebar shows the list of recorded sessions of the visitor ordered from oldest to most recent.
   
6. Do the recordings record sensitive data?
   By default, VWO hides all key presses to avoid storing or transmitting any personal or sensitive data to VWO servers. Additionally, you can hide the sensitive data explicitly by adding the "nls_protected" class to the input field and we will not store or transmit the field input. For example, <input type="text" name="cc_number" class="nls_protected"/> 
   
7. Why do the recordings appear to be distorted and broken/blank?
   This can happen due to multiple reasons:
   
   a. A recording might get corrupt when we have failed to capture HTML data required in order to      play the recording. This generally happens because the user was not on the page for a long        enough duration (approx. < 5 seconds).
   
   b. It could be because of the CORS policy. (Refer to the error message in the screenshot                  below). To overcome this, the customer needs to add an extension called 'ModHeader'                  (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/modheader/idgpnmonknjnojddfkpgkljpfnnfcklj? hl=en). 

This extension requires following two parameters to be configured:

1. Access-Control-Allow-Origin = *
   
2. URL Pattern = <customer website url>
   
   

To configure the two parameters in your extension, you need to follow these steps:

1. Enable the ModHeader plugin
2. Click on the + sign present in the top right corner of the extension dialog and select the Response header option. 
3. Enter the value for it as Access-Control-Allow-Origin = *
4. Again, click on + sign, and select a Filter option.
5. Enter the value for the URL pattern. For example, https://www.ncp.co.uk/fonts*

          c. The CSS may appear broken because of CSS Versioning. When a recording is created, VWO                   saves the HTML file of the webpage. If the website CSS is updated after a recording is                             saved, a discrepancy occurs between the CSS versions of the recording and the website.
               To solve this issue, redirect older versions of the CSS to the new version or you may try                           installing the Custom Redirects extension in your browser.

          d. Some files might get blocked due to the CSP policy which in-turn leads to blank recordings.                  You would need to whitelist the below VWO Policies to ensure the tracking works fine.                            Please get all these whitelisted and then check if you still face the issue.

                Content-Security-Policy:
               script-src  'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com; style-src 'self'                    'unsafe-inline';  img-src 'self' dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com; worker-src 'self' blob:

                VWO’s  Global Policy
               default-src 'none'; script-src 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline' dev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com                         app.vwo.com; style-src 'unsafe-inline' app.vwo.com;
               connect-src .visualwebsiteoptimizer.com app.vwo.com;
               img-src .visualwebsiteoptimizer.com app.vwo.com; worker-src blob:;
               frame-src app.vwo.com; font-src app.vwo.com

                VWO’s Synchronous Code Policy
               default-src 'none'; script-src 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline'                                                                               d5phz18u4wuww.cloudfront.netdev.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com app.vwo.com;
               style-src 'unsafe-inline' app.vwo.com; connect-src .visualwebsiteoptimizer.com                                     app.vwo.com; img-src .visualwebsiteoptimizer.com; worker-src blob:; frame-src                                     app.vwo.com; font-src app.vwo.com

               The screenshot shows some files which are getting blocked due to the policy violation:

7. Why aren’t some of the dropdown menus recorded?
   The dropdown menus that load using the CSS Hover effect does not appear in the recording. 
   
   
8. How to record all the pages of your website?
   To capture all web pages of your website, run the recording site-wide. VWO does the recording for all the pages where the VWO code is present.
   
   
9. The date-time that appears in the “created on” field is shown in which timezone?
   The “created on” field shows the date-time as per the timezone configured in the “Locale Settings” of your account. To modify this, go to Settings > Campaign settings> Locale Settings.
   
   
10. Can a recording pageview be shared directly ?
    Yes, just append "recordingId={PAGEVIEW_ID}" query param with request.