When viewing Visitor and Account metadata in Pendo, you can see details related to the last event Pendo processed for a visitor. If you want to view historical data to better understand the context for how a visitor or account was using your app when a Feature, Page, Track Event, or Guide event was recorded, you can promote your Visitor and Account metadata.
When you promote user metadata, this allows the data to also function as a global event property, which means you can see the promoted values at the time they were stored for each event. This provides a more accurate view of user activity and allows you to track changes in behavior over time, rather than only seeing the value recorded on the latest event.
This article reviews how to promote user metadata to a global event property.
Note: Promoted metadata is currently available through a closed beta program. If you're interested in getting early access to this feature, contact your Pendo customer success representative.
For mobile users, promoted metadata is supported on versions 2.21.0 and above.
Understand promoted metadata
We recommend being selective about which metadata fields you promote. To best utilize this feature, focus on fields where the values change over time. It's also important to track which metadata fields you promote and demote and when.
To better understand the benefits of promoted metadata, consider the video overview and example below.
Imagine you have a visitor in your product named Alice and a metadata field in your subscription related to Account Type with values of Free and Paid.
On Alice's first three visits to the application, she was using a Free plan and visited the "Account Page" on three separate occasions—January 1, January 4, and January 7. After January 7, Alice upgraded her account to a Paid plan and made two more visits to the Account Page in the month of January.
If the Account Type metadata field was not promoted during Alice's activity, you would only be able to see the most recent value of her Account Type, which was Paid. All of Alice's previous activity would be associated with Paid as the metadata value since that was the most recently recorded value.
If the Account Type metadata field was promoted during Alice's activity, you could view the unique metadata value for each event at the time it occurred. This means you could see exactly what Alice did in your product when she was on a Free plan and compare it to her activity when she was on a Paid plan.
Promote metadata
You can promote up to five data mappings (five total across all levels of data—Visitor, Account, and Parent Account) to function as a global event property.
- To promote user metadata, navigate to Settings > Data Mappings in Pendo Engage.
- By default, you are taken to all Visitor-level data. If you would like to promote Account-level data, select the Account Level Data tab.
- In the Metadata table, find the Promoted column and select the checkbox next to an event you'd like to promote as a global event property.
- Next, select Promote in the confirmation dialog.
- Repeat Steps 3 and 4 for each metadata field you'd like to promote. You can promote up to five fields across all levels of data.
Notice: When promoting metadata, there are a few important things to take note of:
- Once you promote metadata to a global event property, it applies to all future events going forward. You cannot view promoted metadata values for past events.
- You can only promote a single metadata value three times in a 24-hour period.
- You cannot promote the following metadata: default values of Visitor ID and Sample Group, metadata with a list type, and non-agent metadata.
To demote a data mapping, unselect the checkbox and select Demote in the confirmation dialog. Once demoted, the metadata still displays with event properties—such as in Data Explorer, the segment rule builder, and the Event Properties tables—so that you can view historical data related to when that value was promoted to function as an event property.
Use promoted metadata
To learn about how to view and report on promoted metadata, you can watch the below video and refer to our article on Event Properties.