About Identity Types and Attributes

Setting Up the Identity System

Note You must be a Personalization administrator to set up the identity system. Salesforce employees who have been granted access to an account can’t configure identities.

You set up the identity system during implementation before collecting data through site mapping, data-driven events, or data feeds. The identity types you select define a unique user profile within Personalization. After creating an identity type, you associate it with user profile attributes to capture specific user data.

Setting up the identity system is a permanent configuration. After you set up an identity type, you can’t change it or delete it. Consider the implications of identity management before configuring the identity system. Only configure identity types and attributes that you require. Choose identity types based on confidence, availability, and uniqueness. For example, if you set up First Name as an identifier, Personalization merges every user named Bob to a single user profile, and you can’t unmerge those users. There’s no way to split a merged user profile.

If you're already collecting data and want to set up the identity system, consider the following before proceeding:

• When you set up the identity system, it only collects data from that point forward.

• Any data that Personalization collected previously as a regular attribute doesn’t migrate to the identity system. For example, if you collect Customer ID as an attribute and then collect Customer ID as an identity type, the previously captured attribute data doesn’t migrate to the identity type.

• Never set up an attribute that’s already collecting data as an identity type.

Identity Type Uniqueness

An identity type’s uniqueness value determines whether the identity system can use it for identity lookup and user profile merging. When you set up an identity type, you select its uniqueness value.

When selecting a uniqueness value, keep these considerations in mind:

• When merging user profiles, the identity system only considers identity types using the Identity Namespace uniqueness value.
• ETL jobs can’t update an identity with a value of Not Unique.