How Lapse Works

One shape

Every journey has the same shape:

When an event happens, but another event does not happen within a window, emit a new event.

That covers cart abandonment (added, never bought), checkout drop-off (started, never paid), forms started and never submitted, quotes without orders, and trials without activation. The Journeys page offers templates for the first three; Blank lets you define any other.

How events reach Lapse, and where the signal goes

Lapse sits between two Echo destinations:

1. Inbound: an Echo destination of type Lapse forwards the property's events to Lapse. Without it, no journey ever runs.
2. Outbound: the emitted event (for example cart_abandoned) enters Echo as an ordinary event. Every Echo destination whose event filter includes that name, or that forwards everything, receives it: a CRM through a Custom destination, an ad platform, or Lens. Observer monitors and Activate audiences can use it like any other event.

Both links fail silently if they are missing, so the dashboard, the Journeys list and the editor all check them and show a red warning when:

• the property has no enabled Lapse destination;
• the Lapse destination's event filter leaves out an event an active journey needs (its entry, exit and refresh events, plus session_start);
• no destination is listening for a journey's emitted event.

Lapse never re-enters its own output: an event that Lapse emitted cannot open or extend a journey. Bot filtering is set on the Lapse destination in Echo (Exclude bot traffic), not on each journey; when it is on, bot events never reach Lapse.

Windows

The window can be 1 minute to 43,200 minutes (30 days).

An inactivity window can only see the events Lapse receives. If the Lapse destination forwards only cart events, someone browsing with a full cart looks idle. Forward page_view too, or forward everything.

Visitor sessions end after 30 minutes without activity. An inactivity window shorter than that can call a journey abandoned while the visitor is still in the same session and might come back. That is right for a form (10 minutes of silence on a half-filled form means they left) and usually wrong for a cart, where 35 minutes or more is the norm. The editor explains this when you pick a short window.

Identity

Track By decides whose journey it is:

Resolved early

When a visitor starts a new session, their previous session is over. Lapse uses that: instead of waiting out the rest of the timer, it emits the signal straight away. The dashboard counts these as Resolved Early. This needs session_start forwarded to Lapse; without it, only the timer ever fires.

The snapshot

Echo handles each event once, so Lapse keeps a copy of the entry event while the journey is open: its value, currency, items, campaign and identifiers. The emitted event is that copy with a new name. Whatever the snapshot holds is all the signal will ever carry.

• Refresh The Snapshot On replaces the copy with a newer event, such as a later add_to_cart or view_cart. Without it, a cart entered at $40 and abandoned at $260 is reported at $40.
• Accumulators go further and build values across all of the journey's events, such as the full list of items in the cart or a running cart total. See Journey Settings.

The emitted event also gets:

Consent

A journey can check the visitor's consent before it signals. At emit (the default) checks consent at the moment the signal would fire, which can be well after the visitor left. At entry uses consent as it was at the entry event, so a visitor who withdraws consent during the window is still signaled. Not checked applies no check in Lapse; destinations may still apply their own. A journey that lapses without the required consent sends nothing and is counted as Suppressed For Consent on the dashboard.

Status

Only Active journeys run, and only on the property they were created in.

Plan limits

Your plan sets how many journeys the company can define. A new journey over that limit cannot be saved; editing an existing journey is never blocked, even if the company is over its limit. Signals emitted are counted per calendar month as plan usage. Lapse does not stop emitting signals when a count is reached.

Terms