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BlueConic provides data type validation for profile properties. This helps guarantee that profiles contain valid data, which leads to higher data quality, making your data both more useful and better able to sync with other systems.

Data is validated for the number, decimal, currency, date time, and email address types. At the time of the upgrade, BlueConic analyzed the values of all existing profile properties to find the percentage of valid values for each property.

BlueConic profile property data types

BlueConic profile properties are set to one of the following data types: 

• Text — The value stored in the profile property is in text format. Valid entries include any type of text. Examples: ブルークルー, BlueCrew 
• Email address — The value contains a valid email address. Example: anyuser@domain.com
• Number — The value stored in the profile property is in numerical format: 0 to 9 and -. If you select this format, select the units for the number below. The maximum number that can be held by BlueConic is 2,147,483,647. Examples: 1234 and -9876
  Note: You can store numbers higher than 2,147,483,647 that you don't use for mathematical operations in a property of type Text.
• Decimal — The value contains numbers from 0 to 9, - and . with a maximum of 4 decimal places. Examples: 12.3456 and -98
• Currency — The value contains numbers from 0 to 9, - and .. If you select this format, you can select from over 150 currencies, with the corresponding units. Examples: 12.34 and -98.76. 
• Date time — The value stored in the profile property is in UNIX millisecond timestamp format: the number of milliseconds since 1-1-1970 UTC. Example: 1538073598692 represents September 27th, 2018 6:39:58 PM UTC

Note: When you create a new profile property using the number, date time, currency, decimal, or email address type, validation is always enabled. (Content stored as text is not validated.) When you set these data types, BlueConic will enforce them. 

Upon enabling validation, BlueConic enforces validation going forward when values are retrieved, exported, or changed.

Once there is at least one profile with a value for the profile property, you can no longer change the data type (except for "Text" profile properties, which can be changed to the type "Email address" at all times). For this reason, be sure to choose data types carefully. Contact BlueConic Support if you need help setting this up.

Enabling data validation for existing number and date time properties

When BlueConic analyzes profile properties set to the number or date time data type, validation will be enabled automatically only for profile properties with more than 99% type validation. 

For profile properties whose type is number or date time, if validation is not yet enabled, the profile property view shows the option to Open validation analysis.

BlueConic will analyze a random sample of up to 10,000 profiles to evaluate the percentage of valid values. For example, if you enable validation for a profile property called "Age" to make sure the values are all valid numbers, BlueConic reports the scope of invalid values, with details on the first 500 invalid values in the sample set, as shown below. You can choose to manually fix the invalid entries (click Cancel) or click Yes, enable to enable validation and remove invalid profile properties.

Enabling validation for email addresses previously stored as text

BlueConic can help you identify email addresses previously stored as text. BlueConic analyzes your content to identify the percent of values of the valid data type. If more than 80% of the values in a profile property are valid email addresses, the text "Not yet enabled" is shown in the Validation column of the profile properties overview. Profile properties with fewer than 80% valid values will show the text "N/a" in the Validation column.

All profile properties of type text can be converted to type email address. In the settings for a profile property, select the "Email address" option from the Type drop-down menu. When you select this option, a pop-up window appears, where BlueConic analyzes the values stored in the profile property. Click Yes, convert to enforce validation. Going forward, this cleans out invalid email addresses of visitors that touch your channels, and invalid entries will no longer be accepted. Click Cancel to leave the profile property as is; the type remains as text, and the invalid data stays in the profiles.

Handling sensitive or PII data

Note that if your profile properties contain personally identifiable information, or PII, you can control data visibility according to your BlueConic users' roles. See Data sensitivity and visibility and PII for details.

Data types for read-only profile properties

All tenants include BlueConic-created profile properties that are read-only, meaning their settings and data type are predefined and cannot be changed. These are the current read-only properties:

• Creation date: Data type is “Date time.”
• Last visited date: Data type is “Date time.”
• Domain group: Data type is “Text.”
• Last modified date: Data type is “Date time.”
• System has property: Data type is “Text.”

For more on these properties, review the article Managing read-only, system-created profile properties.