Custom Data Designer: Attribute Details

Owned by Nathan Jackson
Last updated: May 28, 2024
5 min read

The Composition of an Attribute

An Attribute is a piece of information that describes an event that has occurred. For example, if a form was submitted on a site, you may want to know information about the form that was submitted (e.g., Form ID, Form Name,) or the user that submitted the form (e.g., User Id). These pieces of information about the Form Submission event are your Attributes.



The main structure of an Attribute is the Attribute Name, it's Description, and the Scope for which it is available. We'll go into more detail on this later!



Within an Apollo Property, the Attribute Details Side Panel will appear as follows:

And is accessible by clicking any Attribute pill within a Tracking Item tree of a Business Requirement:





Creating an Attribute

If you are creating a new Attribute to support a Business Requirement, you will be asked to provide the following details:

  • Attribute Name - User friendly name describing the information being collected

  • Description - Additional context or definition for the Attribute to help others understand the purpose of the Attribute

  • Scope - the level at which the Attribute will be available for use within Apollo

    • Global: The Attribute will be able to be seen by everyone who uses Apollo. You will likely not see this option in the menu, as global Attributes are managed by the Apollo team directly. If you have a suggestion for a global requirement, please reach out to your assigned CSM or contact us.

    • Agency: The Attribute will be able to be seen by everyone within your agency for any organization and property (the option to create new agency Attributes requires that you are an agency admin or architect).

    • Organization: The Attribute will be able to be seen by all properties within a given organization. This is usually the recommended option if you anticipate you may want to track the same thing in other tag manager properties in the future. You must be an admin or architect to be able to create new Attributes for an organization.

    • Property: The Attribute will only be visible for the specific property you are working in. Select this option if the Attribute is extremely specific to this particular property and is unlikely to be needed in any future properties within the same organization. You must be an admin or architect to be able to create new Attributes for a property.



Hit "Save" after you have filled out the required fields.



Performing a Replacement on an Attribute

If an Attribute already exists at the global, agency, or organization-level, but you wish to customize it for your specific use case, you have the option of performing a replacement. A replacement will take the scope down to the desired lower level, allowing you to customize the Attribute to your needs.

  • If an Attribute is globally-scoped, it can be customized for the agency (if you are an agency admin), organization, or property.

  • If an item is agency-scoped, it can be customized for the organization or property-level.

  • If an item is organization-scoped, it can be customized for the property-level.

The most common scenario is to customize a global Attribute for an organization-level use case to reflect the nomenclature that your organization uses rather than the generic option that is presented in the global Attribute.



To perform a replacement, click the Attribute pill underneath the business requirement after expanding it.



Next, click the 2 overlapping squares in the upper right corner. (If the item is global, you will likely not see the edit pencil, just the replacement icon.)



Proceed to change any of the question text or description. In this case, I have included a new acronym reference (CIDs) to reflect the name my company uses for internal campaign tracking. Afterwards, select the appropriate scope in the lower left (for a discussion of scopes, see the "Creating a New Business Requirement" section above).



When you have finished editing, hit the replace button in the lower right corner.



NOTE: Changes will be visible immediately across all properties within the scope selected, so it is important to let people know if your changes impact other existing properties within an organization or agency that are already using Apollo. Changes to wording will impact the SDR (Solution Design Reference) export, as well as the titles of future automated dashboard sections within Analysis Workspace if you are an Adobe Analytics client using this feature.







Editing an Existing Business Requirement

To edit a business requirement, follow the same steps as above, but hit the edit pencil instead of the icon with the 2 squares. If you see the edit pencil, you have access to directly edit the requirement without having to reduce the scope of the requirement. This is likely going to be shown for you on organization or property-level items you have access to if you are an admin. (For agency admins, you may see this on agency-level items you have created as well.)



If you need to make a change and have the option to edit, you should do so, taking into account that the changes are immediate and will impact all lower scopes (so all organizations within an agency, all properties within an organization, etc.) If you have existing properties, ensure it is clear to the others working in Apollo that the change is coming or has been made.



How to Find the Right Business Requirement to Edit/Replace (using the Visual SDR)

If you are not sure which business requirement is associated with a given item, the Visual SDR can help you find it! If you know the event, attribute, variable, type of item, or data layer location, you can create a column for the item you do know, click on it, create a second column for business requirements, and toggle to view selected items only to see which business requirement to search for to be able to edit or replace from there.