Throttling

Throttling stops Insito from interrupting a user again too soon after a survey was shown. The default is 7 days, and it applies per project, per user — not per survey. Once any survey is shown to a user, that user won’t be shown another survey in the same project until the window elapses.

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How the window works

Throttling is enforced in Redis:

1. When a survey modal is shown, the SDK calls POST /v1/sdk/impression. The API writes a key throttle:<projectId>:<userId> with a TTL of throttle_days × 86,400 seconds (the shown survey’s window).
2. On every POST /v1/sdk/event and POST /v1/sdk/evaluate, the API checks whether that key exists before any survey matching. If it exists, the API returns survey: null and the SDK silently returns to idle.

Because the key isn’t scoped to a survey ID, showing any survey throttles the user against all surveys in the project until the TTL expires. Implications:

• An impression (modal shown) is what starts the window — not the response. A user who closes the modal without answering is still throttled.
• A failed or abandoned response doesn’t undo the throttle: if the modal was shown, the impression already set the key.
• The window length is taken from the survey that was actually shown, so if two surveys have different throttle_days, the one shown wins for that user.

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Tuning the window

In the survey builder, open the Trigger tab and set Minimum days between shows (the throttle_days field). Range is 0–365; the default is 7. Setting it to 0 disables throttling for that survey (useful for testing). It takes effect on the next event/evaluate call. Recommended settings:

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Per-survey show caps

Separately from the project-wide time window, a survey can cap how many times it is ever shown to one user via the frequency → max shows per user setting. The API counts rows in the impressions table for that (survey, respondent) and stops matching once the cap is reached. Use this for “show this at most twice, ever” rules that a time window can’t express.

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Cross-survey behaviour

Since the throttle key is project-wide, two different surveys cannot both fire on the same user within the window — the first one shown blocks the rest. If you need surveys that can interleave more freely, keep their windows short or use separate projects.

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Testing without waiting

There’s no “reset throttling” button in the dashboard. To iterate during development:

1. Set the survey’s Minimum days between shows to 0.
2. Pass a fresh userId to MicroSurvey.identify() each test session.
3. Or use a separate test project (its own API key).