Pendo calculates metrics for your analytics based on events collected. To keep your analytics clean of unwanted data, you can use exclude lists to define specific criteria to filter out (exclude) events. You can do this based on server hosts, IP addresses, Visitor IDs, and Account IDs.
You can also use an Include List to display captured events only for server hosts and domains that you specify. You must choose between using an exclude list or include list for server hosts and domains.
Exclude and Include Lists are a subscription-wide option accessible by your subscription admins and users with the View or Manage Include/Exclude List permission in Settings > Exclude and include lists.
Tabs
You can exclude events based on domain, IP address, Visitor ID, and Account ID or restrict event inclusion to specific server hosts and domains. These options are separated into four tabs in Settings > Exclude and include lists.
Server Host/Domain
The Server Host/Domain tab allows you to exclude or include specific locations or addresses of a server on the internet. You can also add wildcards such as "dev*" or "*:3000." An item created with a wildcard counts as a single item in your list.
The include list for server hosts and domains can be very restrictive. If you encounter issues like missing data, check your include list configuration.
IP Address
The IP Address tab allows you to exclude specific IP addresses of locations, for example, your home or office. To add your own IP address to a list, select Add IP Address and then Detect My IP.
You can also exclude a wildcard range using * to represent any value in an octet. For example, entering 203.0.113.* would exclude all IP addresses from 203.0.113.0 through 203.0.113.255. This cannot be implemented via the Pendo UI and requires submitting a ticket to Pendo Support.
Visitor ID
The Visitor ID tab allows you to exclude visitors based on their Visitor ID. You can also exclude individual visitors by selecting Exclude visitor from the details section of that visitor in Pendo.
You can use wildcards in your lists. For example, if your Visitor IDs are email addresses, you can use *@acme.com to exclude all visitors who have @acme.com in their Visitor ID.
Account ID
The Account ID tab allows you to exclude visitors based on their Account ID. For example, if your employees all sign in under "YourCompany" account, you can exclude the full "YourCompany" account to clean out all of that data. Similar to Visitor IDs, you can use wildcards to exclude a certain pattern of Account IDs, for example, AcmeIndustries_*.
Excluded Account ID events don't update the account list or first and last visit times. They also don't associate visitor events with the excluded account.
Search and edit entries in bulk
Each tab loads every entry in its list, and Search matches text anywhere in an entry and is not case sensitive. For example, searching for acme.com also finds app.acme.com. If you're a subscription admin or have the Manage Include/Exclude List permission, you can also remove many entries at once or replace text across them. The same options are available for staging servers in Settings > Staging if you can configure staging.
Remove multiple entries
- Go to Settings > Exclude and include lists and open the tab for the list you want to change.
- Select the checkbox next to each entry you want to remove. To select every entry that matches a search, enter text in Search first, and then select the checkbox in the table header.
- Select Remove selected, and then choose Remove entries to confirm.
Changing your search clears your selection. If some entries can't be removed, they stay selected so that you can try again.
Find and replace text in entries
Find and replace changes the same text in many entries at once, for example, when a domain moves from acme.com to acme.io.
- Go to Settings > Exclude and include lists and open the tab for the list you want to change.
- (Optional) Select the entries you want to change. If you don't select any, the replacement applies to every entry in the list that contains the text you're finding.
- Select Find and replace.
- Enter the Text to find and the Replacement text. Matching ignores case, and the replacement is added exactly as you enter it.
- Review the preview that appears as you type, which lists the current and new value of each entry. Entries that can't be changed, such as one that would duplicate another entry, show the reason and are skipped.
- Select the replace button, for example, Replace 12 entries.
Keep the following in mind when you remove or replace entries in bulk:
- Changes can take a few minutes to apply to analytics and guides.
- Find and replace can't rename hosts. To change a host, remove it and add the new one.
- A wildcard (
*) can only replace text in entries that are already wildcards. To cover several exact entries with one wildcard, add the wildcard entry first, and then remove the exact entries it covers. - Lists over 10,000 entries show a warning, and search and bulk actions apply only to the entries that loaded.
Exclude list
You can add up to 10,000 unique items to your exclude lists. This is a global limit across all four lists. To avoid a negative impact on performance, we don't recommend exceeding 5,000 items.
You can retrieve exclude list entries with the Pendo API, but adding and removing entries is done in the Pendo UI. For more information, see the our API documents. If you need to add a large number of items, we recommend contacting Pendo Support for guidance.
When modifying your exclude list, the time it takes for your analytics to refresh increases with the volume of data associated with the excluded item.
Your exclude list filters out events from Pendo's metrics and details for all segments (except Excluded Accounts and Visitors, or Excluded Visitors if account-level analytics is not turned on) that match at least one of the filter settings: Server Host/Domain, Source IP Address, Visitor ID, and Account ID.
The exclude list doesn't affect visitor guide eligibility. Excluded visitors can still see and interact with guides, but those events are filtered out of analytics across Pendo.
Metadata processing for excluded filters
Pendo processes metadata events immediately at the time of receipt. Unlike recalculating metrics when exclude filters change, Pendo never "recalculates" metadata. The following describes the metadata processing behavior for events matching exclude list filters.
Even if the exclude list filters change, the following effect remains. This effect depends on the state of the exclude list at the time Pendo receives the event.
- Web SDK or API-defined metadata values for visitors and accounts always update immediately.
- Metadata values applicable to guide segmentation continue to affect guide eligibility.
- First visit and Last visit account (automatic) metadata values don't update.
- If a visitor isn't already associated with an Account ID, an excluded event doesn't create an association between the Visitor ID and Account ID. This affects a visitor's Account ID and the list of visitors on the account's details page. Despite this potentially missing association, if an exclude filter changes to expose previously excluded events, the detail view of an account includes the events in the metrics and lists the Visitor ID, which could be missing the association in the visitor's Account ID field.
Excluded Accounts and Visitors segment
The Excluded Accounts and Visitors segment is built in and available in the segment filter across Pendo. It includes the visitors and accounts with at least one event that matches a current exclude filter in the selected time range, so you can see what your exclude list is filtering out of your analytics.
Use this segment to confirm that your exclude list catches the visitors and accounts you intended, and only those. For example, check that your internal users are excluded, or find out why a customer's activity is missing from your reports.
When you filter by this segment, the data shows the excluded events for the visitors and accounts it includes. To see more about one of them, select it from the list to open its details page. The metrics on the details page still omit excluded events.
Excluded visitors and accounts don't appear in visitor or account search results, even when this segment is selected. To find one, filter by this segment and then select the visitor or account from the list.
Include list
The include list is only available for server hosts and domains. Subdomains must be explicitly added to the include list to display in analytics across Pendo.
The include list performs the exact opposite operation of the exclude list and must be used instead of the exclude list. When turned on, data from only server hosts and domains you specify appear in Pendo analytics.
To switch to the include list, go to Settings > Exclude and include lists > Server Host/Domain and select Convert to Include List next to + Exclude Server Host/Domain. You are then given two options for your current exclude list settings:
- Clear List. This removes all exclude list settings in that specific filter.
- Transfer List. This allows you to keep a record of the current settings you've defined.
If you plan to use the include list and have NPS email backup enabled, add app.pendo.io, us1.app.pendo.io, app.eu.pendo.io, app.jpn.pendo.io, or app.au.pendo.io (based on your data hosting environment) to the include list. If you don't do this, email NPS responses only appear when filtering by the Excluded Visitors and Accounts segment (or Excluded Visitors if account-level analytics is not turned on).