TNEW session sharing

Share login sessions between TNEW and Action Links to facilitate a better experience for users navigating between the two.

What is session sharing with TNEW?

When a user visits a Tessitura-integrated Action Link or a page on your TNEW site, a session is created in Tessitura. At this point, if the user isn't logged in, the session will be associated with your anonymous Constituent. When a user logs in – either from the TNEW Account Login page, or from an Action Link using the Log in or Register action – the status of the session is updated. An encrypted version of the 'session key' that identifies that session is stored in a cookie on the user's device so that the session can persist as the user navigates between pages on the website.

If session sharing between your Action Links and TNEW has been enabled, a session initiated on TNEW can be accessed by your Action Links, and vice versa*. This means that when a user logs in on one platform, they will be logged in on the other and can therefore seamlessly navigate between the two sites. If session sharing has not been configured, a user who logs in on TNEW and then navigates to your Action Links will need to log in again if they want to access content that requires them to log in.

Session sharing can therefore improve the experience for your users, particularly where you've created journeys that require a user to move between TNEW and your Action Links.

*Session sharing can only be initiated through the Log in or Register action

TNEW's session sharing, which requires a request to be made to TNEW from a user's browser to retrieve a session key, makes it challenging to support in a product that is designed to work agnostically with many different systems. The solution we've found is to only initiate a shared session when visiting a Link that uses the Log in or Register action. A user who is logged in on TNEW will therefore not be considered logged in when visiting an Action Link unless they first visit a Link that uses the Log in or Register action. To facilitate this, you can use an authorisation rule in the pre-action layer to redirect a user who is not logged in to a Log in or Register Link, with a returnUrl parameter in the URL that will redirect them back again having initiated a shared session with the logged-in TNEW session.

If you need help, get in touch with us at [e-mail].

Setting up TNEW session sharing

Setting your Action Links up to share sessions with TNEW is simple, just follow these steps:

1. Ask Tessitura to add your Action Links subdomain to the approved redirect domains configuration for your TNEW site;

2. Configure the subdomain in your Domain Name System (DNS);

3. Add the subdomain to Action Links;

4. Add a Tessitura integration.

1. Asking Tessitura to update your TNEW settings

The first thing you need to do is open a support ticket (or talk to your implementation contact) and ask for your chosen subdomain to be added to the approved redirect domains configuration for your TNEW site. Here's an example of what you might say in your message:

Please could you add links.mywebsite.com to the approved redirect domains configuration for our TNEW site.

This is a security setting that allows your Action Links to make requests to your TNEW site and retrieve an active session key (or if there is no active session, request a new session key), and set a cookie so that it can be accessed between page views.

This step may take some time, so it's good to do this sooner or later – you don't need to have completed steps 2 and 3 first.

2. Configure your DNS settings

Next it's time to get the subdomain for Action Links set up. Log in to your domain provider and add a CNAME record with a value of action.link and a name matching the subdomain you want to use for Action Links (e.g. links).

3. Add the subdomain to Action Links

Finally you need to add your new subdomain to Action Links. Head to the My Organisation page, click Add domain, enter your chosen domain and click Add domain.

4. Add a Tessitura integration

Last but not least, you need to add a Tessitura integration to your Action Links account and provide the TNEW encryption credentials.

That's it! It may take up to 24 hours for your DNS to propagate and for session to be successfully shared.

Custom domain must use the same root domain as TNEW

Although you can use Action Links with either a top-level domain (e.g. mylinks.com) or a subdomain (e.g. links.mywebsite.com), due to browser security policies your Action Links and TNEW site must share the same root domain; this is essential to allow TNEW to set a cookie with a user's session key on your Action Links domain. You'll therefore need to use a subdomain of the same root domain; for example, if your TNEW site is at tickets.mywebsite.com you could use links.mywebsite.com for your Action Links domain.

Sessions expire after 30 minutes with TNEW

Action Links login sessions have long expiration periods by default, however when session sharing with TNEW is enabled, sessions are limited to the expiration period of your TNEW site (usually 30 minutes). Action Links does not regularly post active sessions back to TNEW to extend the expiration period, which means a user who logs in on TNEW, navigates to an Action Link and then some time later navigates back to TNEW may find that they are no longer logged in.