Custom Data Designer: Business Requirement Details

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

The Composition of a Business Requirement

The main structure of Apollo is based on business requirement questions, each of which has tracking items associated. Tracking items are the combination of events, attributes, data sources, and variables to satisfy a given requirement.



Creating a New Business Requirement

When you create a new business requirement, it is important to understand the structure of a tracking item mentioned above. To start, within the Design -> Business Requirements area, hit the "Create New" button in the upper right corner.



Begin by providing the business question you are looking to answer and a description of the requirement. Business questions should end in a question mark and answer what, how many, when, where, or why something is tracked.



Skip the grayed out Event/Attribute/Data Source/Variables section for now. We will be able to set these up in the next step. Scroll further down within the window and fill out the site feature, site vertical (if applicable, optional) and report type fields, as well as the scope.



  • Site Features describe the function of the item you are trying to track. Select the most applicable menu item from the predefined list. This will allow you to find this item in the future when viewing all requirements within a given site feature.



  • Site Vertical describes the type of organization that is likely to use this requirement. If it is generic or applies to most organizations, you can leave this blank. If it is highly specific to a given vertical, such as likely to be used by healthcare only, financial services only, etc., you can select the appropriate vertical from the list.



  • Report Type indicates how the item will show when deployed to dashboards within Analysis Workspace on the Adobe Analytics version of Apollo. Most of the time, "Freeform Table" is the appropriate selection. Only select "Flow" if you want to see how the value changes over time for a given item. If you are setting up a requirement for Google Analytics and see this field, it will not impact anything directly since there not currently a reporting connection, so you can choose "Freeform Table" as a placeholder.



  • Scope is an important selection to make. You likely have the option to choose from Organization or Property scope.

    • Global: The requirement will be able to be seen by everyone who uses Apollo. You will likely not see this option in the menu, as global requirements 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 requirement will be able to be seen by everyone within your agency for any organization and property (the option to create new agency requirements requires that you are an agency admin or architect).

    • Organization: The requirement 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 requirements for an organization.

    • Property: The requirement will only be visible for the specific property you are working in. Select this option if the requirement 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 requirements for a property.



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

You may be taken directly to the Event Attribute screen. If you are not, hit the "Add Event and Attribute" button.



From here, your next step is to select and existing event/attribute pair or create a new one, which is covered in the next article in this series, Custom Data Designer: Event Details.



Note that during the creation process, you can save your work and return to editing later. To get back to a custom requirement you have previously started, filter for "Design Incomplete" requirements using the lower rightmost filter menu in the Design -> Business Requirements section.





Performing a Replacement on a Business Requirement

If a requirement 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 one level lower than the existing scope to allow you to customize the item to your use case.

  • If an item is global, 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 requirement 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 requirement.



To perform a replacement, hit the "View Details" button 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.