Add an activity to a contact

Activities power the contact timeline, trigger workflows, and feed into RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) scoring.

All activities have a spend that is automatically applied to the contacts lifetime value or LTV.

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Creating an activity

POST /activities

At minimum, provide the contact ID, activity type, source, and when it happened:

{
  "contact": 1042,
  "type": "Purchase",
  "source": "website",
  "happenedAt": "2026-04-07T14:30:00+00:00",
  "spend": 4500,
  "currencyCode": "GBP"
}

The spend field is in the smallest currency unit — 4500 means £45.00 for GBP, or $45.00 for USD.

Activity types

The type field must be one of these values:

Type	When to use	Additional fields
Booking	Hotel or venue reservation	Include a booking object (see below)
Checked in	Guest arrives at venue	—
Checked out	Guest departs venue	—
Purchase	Non-Glu purchase or transaction	spend, currencyCode
Shopify order	Order from Shopify	Typically created automatically
Gift card registered	Gift card added to a contact	giftCard Id
Login	Member logged in	—
Connected to wifi	Guest connected to venue wifi	—
Membership started	Contact started a membership	—
Changed tier	Contact moved to a different tier	—
Membership cancelled	Contact cancelled membership	—
Referral invite created	Contact sent a referral	referralInvite (IRI reference)
Referral invite completed	Referral was completed	referralInvite (IRI reference)
Golf reservation
Table reservation

Recording a purchase

For purchases made outside of Glu (in-store POS, external e-commerce, etc.):

{
  "contact": 1042,
  "type": "Purchase",
  "source": "YourPOS",
  "happenedAt": "2026-04-07T19:45:00+00:00",
  "spend": 12750,
  "currencyCode": "GBP",
  "externalReference": "TXN-98765"
}

The externalReference field is important for deduplication — if you send the same activity type with the same external reference twice, Glu will recognise it as a duplicate rather than creating two entries.

Deduplication

Glu deduplicates activities using two methods:

1. By externalReference: If an activity of the same type already exists with the same external reference within the organisation, the existing activity is returned instead of creating a duplicate.

2. By giftCard: For gift card related activities, if an activity already exists for the same gift card, it won't be duplicated.

Always include an externalReference when syncing activities from external systems to make your integration idempotent.

Retrieving a single activity

GET /activities/{id}

Response

{
  "id": 5678,
  "contact": 1042,
  "happenedAt": "2026-04-07T14:30:00+00:00",
  "createdAt": "2026-04-07T14:30:05+00:00",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-07T14:30:05+00:00",
  "type": "Purchase",
  "source": "website",
  "externalReference": "TXN-98765",
  "spend": 4500,
  "currencyCode": "GBP"
}

Custom fields

Common integration patterns

Syncing purchases from your POS

Record every in-store transaction to build a complete picture of customer spending:

Your POS                         Your Server                     Glu API
  │                                  │                              │
  │── Sale completed ───────────────►│                              │
  │                                  │── POST /contacts ───────────►│
  │                                  │◄── Contact (id: 1042) ──────│
  │                                  │                              │
  │                                  │── POST /activities ─────────►│
  │                                  │   {                          │
  │                                  │     contact: 1042,           │
  │                                  │     type: "Purchase",        │
  │                                  │     spend: 4500,             │
  │                                  │     externalReference: "..." │
  │                                  │   }                          │
  │                                  │◄── Activity created ────────│

The contact's totalSpend, lastInteractedAt, and RFM scores update automatically.

Enriching contacts from your CRM

Sync custom attributes from an external CRM or data source:

# 1. Find the contact
curl -s -H "x-api-key: $GLU_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.glu.io/contacts?emailAddress[]=[e-mail]"

# 2. Set custom field values
curl -X POST -H "x-api-key: $GLU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://api.glu.io/contacts/1042/custom-fields" \
  -d '{"fieldName": "external_crm_id", "value": "CRM-48291"}'

curl -X POST -H "x-api-key: $GLU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://api.glu.io/contacts/1042/custom-fields" \
  -d '{"fieldName": "preferred_language", "value": "French"}'

Hotel PMS integration

Record bookings and check-in/check-out events from your property management system:

# 1. Record the booking
curl -X POST -H "x-api-key: $GLU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://api.glu.io/activities" \
  -d '{
    "contact": 1042,
    "type": "Booking",
    "source": "mews",
    "happenedAt": "2026-04-07T10:00:00+00:00",
    "externalReference": "RES-2026-1234",
    "booking": {
      "checkIn": "2026-06-15T15:00:00+00:00",
      "checkOut": "2026-06-18T11:00:00+00:00",
      "numberOfGuests": 2,
      "roomType": "Suite",
      "total": 75000,
      "currencyCode": "GBP",
      "customerReference": "SMITH-0607",
      "purpose": "Leisure",
      "origin": "Direct"
    }
  }'

# 2. Record the check-in when it happens
curl -X POST -H "x-api-key: $GLU_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  "https://api.glu.io/activities" \
  -d '{
    "contact": 1042,
    "type": "Checked in",
    "source": "mews",
    "happenedAt": "2026-06-15T15:22:00+00:00",
    "externalReference": "RES-2026-1234-CHECKIN"
  }'

Activities and workflows

Activities can trigger workflows. For example, a workflow with a booking_created trigger will automatically run when a Booking activity is created. This lets you build automations like:

• Send a welcome email when a booking is recorded

• Award loyalty points when a purchase activity is logged

• Upgrade a membership tier when spend thresholds are met

You don't need to do anything extra — just create the activity and any matching active workflows will execute.

Tips

• Always include externalReference when syncing from external systems to prevent duplicates on retry.

• Use source to identify where the activity came from — this helps when debugging and when building workflow conditions.

• Amounts are always in lowest denomination — pence for GBP, cents for USD/EUR.

• Custom field names are case-sensitive — use the exact fieldName from the custom field definition.

• Custom field values are validated — the API will return a 422 error if the value doesn't match the field type or isn't in the allowed options for a Select field.

• Contact lookup by email — if you don't have the contact ID, use GET /contacts?emailAddress[]=[e-mail] to find it first, or use POST /contacts which will create or update by email and return the contact with its ID.