Preview mode is now available for FullStory customers who are currently leveraging our allowlist approach to managing Element Recording Rules, known as Private by Default.
With the introduction of FullStory’s Preview Mode, Admins now have the ability to test new recording rules on themselves before pushing these changes live for actual end-users. This should help to increase the confidence that Admins have about new iterations of their recording settings and should reduce the need to constantly test new recording rules in an actual staging environment.
Scoping Recording Rules
Core to the new Preview Mode functionality is the ability to Scope your Element Recording Rules. As you can see in the image below, Admins will now have the ability to set each recording rule to one of four different scopes: Preview Sessions Only, Live Sessions Only, Preview and Live Sessions and No Sessions (Inactive).
This table provides short descriptions for each of the four rule scopes:
Once you have a set of rules scoped for Preview Mode it is time to test them out by recording a preview session.
Recording a Preview Session
In order to record preview sessions, an Admin will click the “Record a Preview Session” button in the Element Recording Rules table as seen here:
Clicking this button will prompt the Admin to set a short-lived 3rd party cookie that will expire after 12 hours (or after clicking “End Preview Session” on the Preview Mode banner). The dialog box looks like this:
Clicking “Set Preview Session Cookie” will provide you with the confirmation message seen here:
While this cookie is active, Preview sessions will be recorded for the Admin when they navigate the site or app associated with their FullStory account. While Preview session recording is active and an Admin is browsing their own site, a hide-able banner will be inserted at the top of the the page that will look something like this:
As you can see, this banner includes several buttons we will discuss now.
Once you have completed testing of any new recording rules, you can simply let your Preview Mode cookie expire or you can exit preview mode by clicking the “End Preview Mode” button.
Hopefully Preview Mode leaves you feeling more empowered than ever to properly manage your privacy settings in FullStory. If you would like to review more information on Private by Default and FullStory's Element Recording Rules, please check out this article.