2. Getting Started

This chapter is your fast path from "I just signed up" to "I'm watching real sessions on my site." You can complete every step here in about 15 minutes. If you ever get stuck, jump to [Chapter 23 — Troubleshooting & FAQ].

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2.1 Creating Your Account

To start using FullSession, you'll need an account. There are three ways to create one:

1. Email + password — the most common option for individuals and small teams.

2. Sign in with Google — uses your existing Google identity.

3. Single Sign-On (SSO) — for organizations on the Enterprise plan that have already configured SAML or Auth0. See [Chapter 18 — SSO].

Step-by-step

1. Go to app.fullsession.io and click Sign Up.

2. Enter your work email and a password (or click Continue with Google).

3. Check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the verification link.

4. Fill in a few onboarding questions — your name, company, role, and what you want to use FullSession for. These answers shape the dashboard templates suggested to you later.

5. Choose a plan to start with. You can begin on the Free plan and upgrade at any time. See [Chapter 17 — Billing & Subscriptions].

Tip — if your company already uses FullSession, ask a teammate with admin access to invite you instead of signing up fresh. That way you'll be added to the existing organization with the right permissions. See section 2.5 below.

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2.2 Setting Up Your First Site

A site in FullSession represents one web property you want to track — usually a single domain. Your account can hold many sites, and they all share one account-level Customer ID (more on that in section 2.3 and [Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker]).

Add the site

1. From the home screen, click Add Site (or Set up your first site in the onboarding wizard).

2. Enter:

   • Site name — a friendly label, e.g. "Acme Production".

   • Site URL — the domain you want to track, e.g. https://www.acme.com.

   • Industry / category (optional) — used to suggest dashboards and benchmarks.

   • Time zone — used when displaying dates and time-based reports.

3. Click Create site.

The Site URL matters for more than display: FullSession routes each recorded session to the correct site by matching the session's origin domain against your saved site URLs. So make sure the URL is accurate (mind www vs. non-www and http vs. https).

Your account's Customer ID is what the tracker snippet carries — it's shared across every site you add, not generated per site. You're now ready to install it.

Multi-domain notes

If your product spans multiple domains or subdomains (e.g. app.acme.com and www.acme.com), you can:

• Add each domain as its own site and install the same snippet (same Customer ID) on each — FullSession files each domain's sessions under its matching site automatically, or

• Treat closely related subdomains as one site if you'd rather see their data combined.

See [Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker] for the full multi-domain walkthrough.

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2.3 Installing the Tracker (Overview)

The tracker is a small JavaScript snippet that, once placed on your site, begins capturing sessions automatically. There are two common installation paths:

Method	Best for	Effort
Direct snippet	Sites where you can edit the HTML / template	2 minutes
Google Tag Manager	Marketing-managed sites, no engineering required	3 minutes

(There are also an npm package and native Android/iOS SDKs — see [Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker].)

Option A — Direct snippet

1. On the installation panel, open the Script tab and click Copy (always copy from here so your Customer ID and the correct CDN URL are embedded). The snippet looks like this:

   <!-- Fullsession Recording Code for http://fullsession.io/ -->
   <script type="text/javascript">
       window.FUS_IS_IN_IFRAME = (window.top != window.self);
       (function (m, n, t, l, x, p, o) {
           window["_fus_host"] = l;
           window["_site_id"] = p;
           window["_fus_id"] = x;
           o = n.createElement(t);
           o.type = "text/javascript";
           o.async = true;
           o.src = "https://emitter.fullsession.io/RTSessions.js";
           y = n.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];
           y.parentNode.insertBefore(o, y);
       })(window, document, "script", "fullsession.io", 'YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID');
   </script>

2. Paste it inside the <head> of every page on your site, as high as possible. Most CMSs and frameworks have a single "site header" template where you can paste this once.

3. Publish your site.

The same snippet (carrying the same YOUR_CUSTOMER_ID) goes on every domain in your account.

Option B — Google Tag Manager (GTM)

1. On the installation panel, choose GTM. You can let FullSession connect to your GTM account and create the tag automatically, or do it manually:

2. In GTM, create a new Custom HTML tag named Fullsession Tracking Script.

3. Paste the snippet into the tag body.

4. Set the trigger to fire on All Pages (a page-view trigger).

5. Save, then Submit & Publish the container.

Note — full installation details, including the npm package, mobile SDKs, single-page apps, and multi-domain routing, live in [Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker]. This section is the express version.

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2.4 Verifying Installation

After installing the tracker, FullSession checks that it's actually loading and reaching your account. Verification is a live handshake — the tracker posts a FUS_LOADED signal back to FullSession when it initializes — not just a check that the snippet text is present.

Automatic verification

Open your site in another tab and browse for ~30 seconds, then return to the installation panel. The status will move from Waiting for data to Verified once the tracker's FUS_LOADED handshake is received (verification waits about 8 seconds for the signal before falling back to checking for recorded sessions).

Manual verification

If the panel doesn't reach Verified within a couple of minutes, run these checks:

Check	How to do it
Snippet is on the page	View page source and search for FUS or RTSessions
Snippet runs without errors	Open browser DevTools → Console; look for tracker errors
Network calls reach FullSession	DevTools → Network → filter by fullsession; you should see the RTSessions.js load and outbound requests to emitter.fullsession.io
Customer ID is correct	Verification only succeeds when the snippet's Customer ID matches your account — re-copy from the Script tab if unsure
GTM container is published	In GTM, confirm the version containing the tag has been published, not just saved

Watch a live test session

The best end-to-end test is to record yourself:

1. Open your site in a fresh incognito/private window (so you're treated as a new visitor).

2. Click around for ~30 seconds — visit a few pages, scroll, click a button.

3. Close the tab.

4. Return to FullSession and open Sessions. Within ~1 minute, your test session should appear at the top of the list.

Common gotcha — if you're testing while signed in to FullSession in the same browser, your session may be excluded by the "ignore internal users" settings. Use a private window. See [Chapter 4 — Identifying Users].

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2.5 Inviting Your Team

FullSession is built for collaboration — the more your team uses it, the more value you get from it. Inviting teammates takes a minute.

Send invitations

1. Open Settings → Team (or People).

2. Click Invite member.

3. Enter the teammate's email address.

4. Choose a role for them — this controls what they can see and change:

   • Admin — full access, including billing and team management.

   • Member — can use all product features (sessions, dashboards, funnels, etc.) but can't change billing or invite others.

   • Viewer — read-only access to dashboards, sessions, and reports.

   • Custom roles (Pro+) — define your own permission sets. See [Chapter 16 — Team & Account Management].

5. Click Send invite.

What invitees see

The teammate receives an email with a link to accept the invite. Once accepted:

• They create their own password (or sign in with Google / SSO).

• They land directly on your organization's dashboard.

• They appear in Settings → Team with a status of Active.

Managing existing members

From Settings → Team you can:

• Change a member's role

• Resend a pending invite

• Remove a member from the organization

• See when each member last signed in

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2.6 A 5-Minute Tour of the App

Now that the tracker is running, here's a quick orientation to the parts of the app you'll use most. Each item links to a later chapter where it's covered in depth.

The left navigation

Icon	Section	What it does	Read more
▶	Sessions	Watch recordings of real visits	Ch. 5–6
📊	Dashboards	Customizable charts and KPIs	Ch. 9
🔥	Heatmaps	Click, scroll, and element heatmaps	Ch. 8
🪜	Funnels	Multi-step conversion analysis	Ch. 12
👥	Segments	Saved groups of users / sessions	Ch. 11
💡	Insights	Cards and metrics built from your data	Ch. 10
💬	Feedback	Survey responses and CSAT scores	Ch. 13
🔔	Alerts	Notifications when things change	Ch. 15
⚙	Settings	Sites, team, integrations, billing	Ch. 16–19

The top bar

• Site switcher (top-left) — change which site you're viewing.

• Date range picker — applied globally across most views.

• Global search — jump to a session, dashboard, segment, or funnel by name.

• 🔔 Notifications — alert triggers, mentions, and system messages.

• Profile menu — your account settings, theme toggle, sign out.

What to try first

Now that you've completed setup, a good 5-minute tour looks like this:

1. Sessions → click any session — get a feel for the player. Hit play, scrub the timeline, open the Errors and Network panels.

2. Dashboards → pick a template — choose the role-based template that matches you (Growth, Product, etc.) and watch widgets populate.

3. Heatmaps → pick a page — see where visitors click most.

4. Funnels → create a 2-step funnel — pick Home → Pricing (or any two pages) just to see the flow.

5. Settings → Recording Rules — review what pages are being recorded and adjust if needed. See [Chapter 7 — Recording Rules & Element Tracking].

You're set! From here, every other chapter dives into one area of the app. If you want a guided suggestion, head to Chapter 5 — Sessions next — sessions are the foundation of everything else in FullSession.

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Next up: [Chapter 3 — Installing the Tracker] covers the full installation details — the <script> snippet, GTM, the fullsession npm package, native mobile SDKs, multi-domain routing, and verifying installation in tricky environments.