Offline onboarding: caching, event retries and safe rollouts

1. Make the first launch work without a response

Mobile onboarding often begins before the app has a reliable connection. A configuration request can time out, return an unsupported version or fail while the device appears connected. Decide what the user sees in each case before enabling remote changes.

Ship a usable local default with the application. If a compatible, validated cached configuration exists, the app can use it according to an explicit freshness policy. Otherwise, use the default. Do not leave the first screen waiting indefinitely for a marketing configuration.

Network-path monitoring can inform connection handling, but it does not replace handling actual request failures. A path becoming available is not proof that a particular API request will succeed. Treat timeout, server error, malformed payload and unsupported schema as distinct test cases.

2. Cache a configuration, not an assumption

Validate the configuration before replacing a known usable copy. Keep its schema version, release identity and application context. Your app must reject unsupported content and preserve a safe destination when an action or screen type is unavailable.

Choose whether configuration can change during a journey. Pinning a release for an in-progress flow can prevent a question sequence from changing halfway through. New installations can receive a later release without rewriting what existing participants saw. The right policy depends on the app; document and test it.

The following diagram is a proposed fallback sequence for an application integration, not a claim that every SDK supplies this policy automatically. Aplyna native branches remain app code, and published supported configurations retain their release identity.

3. Separate event recording from delivery

A successful screen transition should not depend on an analytics upload succeeding. Record the event with a stable identifier, original occurrence time and the applicable release or experiment context. Queue permitted events and retry transient delivery failures according to a bounded policy.

If a server accepts a batch but the response is lost, the client may send it again. Reuse the original event identifiers so ingestion can deduplicate the retry. Generating fresh IDs for each delivery attempt turns one completion into several events.

Delayed events also affect reporting. Preserve occurrence time and distinguish it from receipt time. Recompute installation-level outcomes for the original cohort within the documented acceptance and outcome windows. Do not move an offline completion into whichever day the upload finally arrived.

• Keep event identity stable across retries.
• Bound the queue and the retry behavior; document what happens at limits.
• Handle consent changes before collecting or resending telemetry.
• Avoid credentials and personal answers in event payloads.

4. Know what your SDK actually schedules

The current Aplyna source clients persist unsent events and send batches of up to 100. Within a flush call, they retry transient delivery failures twice. After a final failure, the application must call flush again later; the source SDK does not supply a background scheduler.

Consent revocation clears queued telemetry. Test that behavior explicitly, including app restart and later reconnection. Do not add a separate app-owned queue that silently resends data after the SDK has cleared its own queue. Keep app credentials separate from store private keys and server secrets.

These behaviors describe the current documented source clients. Read the guide for the exact platform/version you integrate, and test the implementation your app ships. Neither a cached configuration nor a queued trial-start event validates a purchase or grants an entitlement.

5. Rehearse the failure paths before rollout

Test a fresh install without connectivity, a cached launch without connectivity, a request timeout, an invalid payload, an unsupported version and reconnection after queued events. Include a response lost after server acceptance to verify deduplication. Confirm that navigation still reaches a usable destination.

For a release, preserve the last usable configuration and a clear rollback path. Inspect scoped events for missing exposure or completion signals, but investigate transport health before interpreting a sudden drop as a product effect. Monitoring should help separate a broken delivery path from a less effective onboarding.

Start with a small, explicit release plan and verify the result in the actual native app. A browser design preview proves layout behavior; it does not establish native network reliability, purchase handling or end-to-end production readiness.