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Using column meta data

The Personalization service stores information about visitors by using a person profile. The profile is structured to collect data about persons (information specifically about the visitor), events (captured visitor actions from a website or other location), and touches (a group of associated events that occur no more than 30 minutes apart from one another).

Although some of the fields in the person profile are required by Personalization for its operation (for example, geographic and device-related information stored in the touch), you can use certain fields to store additional data that you may want to use for personalization—for example, information about gender for your visitors. The Personalization service includes a certain number of custom fields for each type of this information:

The method by which Personalization does this is to create an alias (also known as a column name) for your custom data to an existing data structure element, which you are reassigning to collect and store the data that you require. For example, custom field 10 in the Person table might have the alias of gender. Personalization displays gender as the field name in the person profile and in the segment builder.

Viewing your site’s column names

To view the custom field aliases that have already been configured for your Personalization environment, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Personalization, and then click the Configure tab.
  2. From the left menu, click Column Meta Data.

Personalization displays a list of the current aliases for your environment. To search for specific meta data items, complete the following steps:

  1. Enter the name of the meta data item in the Find Meta Data field.
  2. In Table, click on the name of a table to limit your search results to meta data items belonging to that table:
    • Blank: Select this option if you do not want to narrow your search results.
    • Person: Narrows your search results to meta data items from the Person table.
    • Touch: Limits search results to the Touch table’s meta data items.
    • Event: Limits search results to the Event table’s meta data
  3. If you selected a table in Table, Accessor displays a list of column names for the selected table. Select a column name from this list to search for its associated column meta data item.
  4. Click Find.

The list of aliases displayed by Personalization contains several pieces of information:

Column Description
Display name The name of the column meta data item
Table The table to which this column meta data item belongs
Display order The order in which this column meta data item appears in the Properties section of the Person Detail page
Is visible in person detail Whether this particular column meta data item is listed in the Person Detail section of Personalization Web. For more information about the meta data items that are visible in this section of Personalization, see Examining visitor information
Is segmentable Whether this column meta data item can be used as criteria in a segment to track website visitors’ behavior
Is rankable Whether this column meta data item can be used to track the number of times that every permutation of values in this column has occurred, such as how many times a visitor has accessed your website, ranked by the type of platform on which the visitor accessed your website
Description An explanation of the column meta data item’s properties, purpose, and possible uses
Actions Additional steps you can take regarding this column meta data item, including deleting it

Managing your site’s column names

Using the column names page, you can add new column names and edit or remove already existing column names.

Important

Do not modify the values for the following custom fields and their corresponding Accessors column. These fields are used by Personalization for internal data collection.

  • Person table—custom_field_1, custom_field_2, custom_field_3
  • Event table—custom_field_2

Adding a column name

To add a new column name, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Personalization and click the Configure tab.

  2. From the left menu, click Column Meta Data.

  3. Click the Add new column meta data link.

  4. Enter values in the following fields:

    • Display Name: Descriptive name for the column meta data used for display in Personalization. You can’t update the value specified in this field once you have saved the details.

    • Display Order: The order in which the column meta data appears in the Properties section of the Person detail page.

    • Table: Name for the table in Omnichannel. You can’t update the value specified in this field once you have saved the details.

    • Accessor: Method name used to retrieve the value of the column meta data. You can’t update the value specified in this field once you have saved the details.

    • Type: Available data types of the column meta data value (based on the selected Table and Accessor), which controls how you want the data to be displayed and managed:

      • String
      • Boolean
      • Date (Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss:SSS TIMEZONE )
      • Integer
      • Float
      • Comma Separated List

      You can’t update the value specified in the Type field once you have saved the details.

    • Is Visible In Person Detail checkbox: Select the checkbox to display a visitor’s value for the column meta data item in the Properties section of the Person detail page in Personalization.

  5. If you want to create segments based on the values stored in the column, click the Segmentable checkbox, and then enter values for the following fields:

    • Operators: Defines how an element of a segment can be compared to the column value—operators can be numeric values (such as = or <=), or text values (such as matches one), depending on the data type you selected above
    • Category: Descriptive grouping that allows you to organize your meta data segment criteria into folders in the segment builder (examples include Person Properties and Current Location)
    • Units: Units of measure for the segment based on the data type you selected (for example, if you are using the date data type, days since is an available unit of measure)
    • Grouping: A selectable list of groupings to use, based on a list predefined by Personalization in the accessor——for example, Current Touch is one of the items available for Keyword Count column meta data)
    • Label for Terms Value: Label to show if additional terms criteria are required——for example, this label can be be Keywords if a list of keywords is part of the criteria for Keyword Count column meta data)
    • Ignore Case When Comparing checkbox: Select this checkbox to ignore the case (do not distinguish uppercase characters from lowercase characters) when performing a string comparison

  6. If you want the values stored in the column to be ranked, select the Rankable checkbox, and then enter values for the following fields:

    • Ranking Eviction Days: The number of days that the Personalization server will rank values; ranking values that are older than the number of days you enter in this field will be deleted
    • Percentage checkbox: Selecting this checkbox displays the ranking value as a percentage across all ranking values for that column meta data

  7. If you want the column meta data to be visible on the Insights tab of the Person detail page, select the Rankable checkbox, and then enter values for the following fields:

    • Insight Title: The title as displayed on the Insights tab of the Person detail page
    • Insight Display Order: Numeric value that determines the order displayed on the Insights tab of the Person detail page

  8. Click Save.

Editing a column name

To edit a column name, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Personalization, and then click the Configure tab.
  2. From the left menu, click Column Meta Data.
  3. Click the column name that you want to edit, and then modify its values as required.
  4. Click Save to save your changes.

Deleting a column name

To remove a column name, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Personalization, and then click the Configure tab.
  2. From the left menu, click Column Meta Data.
  3. Find the column name that you want to remove, and then click its Delete link.

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