Overwriting Metadata
My understanding is that metadata fields will get overwritten if their values change (assuming the visitor or account ID remains the same). What would happen if a field we were previously sending through the snippet is removed and no longer passed? Once we stop sending that field, if a previous user logs in again, will that field be removed/erased from the user's record? Or will the absence of the field simply allow the old data to persist unchanged?
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Hello! Metadata is overwritten with a last-in value when Pendo initializes. However, if you stop sending that field we will not automatically delete the metadata that had been sent previously for it - we will simply not update the field. As long as you aren't passing the value of the field as a blank string (but rather you are just omitting that field altogether) you don't need to worry about it getting erased.
Is it possible to delete the stale metadata somehow?
Hi Louis Zhu If you are looking to completely remove the entire metadata field for all users you can do that from the data mappings page in Pendo (settings > data mappings). If you would like to selectively remove it for specific users you could use the Pendo API to send blank values for that field for specific users.
Adding onto Todd's point, I wanted to share what you can expect if you send an empty string value versus a null value for a metadata field.
If an empty string is sent for the account metadata field 'store_location'...
When looking at the account record in Pendo, the account metadata field will still exist, but it will be empty.
However, if a null value is sent for the account metadata field 'store_location'...
When looking at the account record in Pendo, the account metadata field will not appear.
On a similar note to this thread ... what happens if the value of account ID & visitor ID changes (meaning we are using new sets of unique identifiers for all accounts & visitors) - does this mean all the old accounts & visitor IDs will still be in play?
Kent Erickson if the visitor ID or account ID values change, this will create an entirely new visitor or account record in Pendo. The historical data will be associated with the old IDs and the new data will be associated with the new IDs.
One option is to pay for Professional Services to merge the old IDs with the new IDs. Learn more here: https://support.pendo.io/hc/en-us/articles/360051378732-Data-Deletion-and-Manipulation-Services#merge-visitor-or-account-ids-0-2
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