DocumentationExperience PlatformPlatform Identity Service Guide

Identity graph viewer

Last update: Wed Jan 24 2024 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

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An identity graph is a map of relationships between different identities for a particular customer, providing you with a visual representation of how your customer interacts with your brand across different channels. All customer identity graphs are collectively managed and updated by Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service in near real-time, in response to customer activity.

The identity graph viewer in the Platform user interface allows you to visualize and better understand what customer identities are stitched together, and in what ways. The viewer allows you to drag and interact with different parts of the graph, allowing you to examine complex identity relationships, debug more efficiently, and benefit from increased transparency with how information is being utilized.

The following document provides steps on how to access and use the identity graph viewer in the Platform UI.

Tutorial video

The following video is intended to support your understanding of the identity graph viewer.

https://video.tv.adobe.com/v/331030/?quality=12&learn=on

Transcript
I’d like to explain the identity graph viewer feature. The persona we have in mind is the data engineer who’s responsible for ingesting data and maintaining data quality. The issue that these data engineers face is that they have no way to understand how identities are stitched today in intuitive manner. In other words, it’s a black box. Without this as a data engineer, you can’t ensure that the data ingested correctly, and this becomes a customer satisfaction issue as customers can’t trust the data ingested on the platform. In a worst case, they may be stitching profiles that should not be stitched and activating them. Our feature allows the user to search, explore, filter identity graphs. The benefits is that this shortens time to value and this is especially useful in scenarios where data engineers want to validate or debug the identity data after ingestion. Now let’s see this feature in action. Identity graph viewer allows the user to investigate how identities are stitched together. After entering an identity value, they’re presented with the graphical representation of the graph. You can explore this to understand how identity values are associated with one another. When clicking on these nodes in the graph, you can see that the table that corresponds to the value is also highlighted and the user is also presented with some additional information to the right that can aid in debugging. If they’re more interested in the data sources and how they are used to construct the graph, the data source tab is available for use as well. This shows essentially a timeline of how data sources were ingested and how they have manipulated the creation of the graph.
When selecting one, you can see the values that have been linked because of it as well as additional information about it.
For the case where we might be investigating an issue with a graph collapse, you could see here we’ve got two clusters that are obviously stitched together possibly an error right here. So, if we’re interested in this edge, we can click this and learn that there are three batches in this particular data set that have contributed to this edge. We know when they happened, and the batch ID, and the source. So, this would be a great starting point for debugging further. -

Getting started

Working with the identity graph viewer requires an understanding of the various Adobe Experience Platform services involved. Before beginning to work with the identity graph viewer, please review the documentation for the following services:

  • Identity Service: Gain a better view of individual customers and their behavior by bridging identities across devices and systems.
  • Real-Time Customer Profile: Identity graphs are leveraged by Real-Time Customer Profile to create a comprehensive and singular view of your customer attributes and behavior.

Terminology

  • Identity (node): An identity or a node is data unique to an entity, typically a person. An identity is comprised of an identity namespace and an identity value. For example, a fully qualified identity could consist of an identity namespace for Email, combined with an identity value of robin@email.com.
  • Link (edge): A link or an edge represents the connection between identities. Identity links include properties such as first established and last updated timestamps. The first established timestamp defines the date and time at which a new identity is linked to an existing identity. The last updated timestamp defines the date and time at which an existing identity link was last updated.
  • Graph (cluster): A graph or a cluster is a group of identities and links that represent a person.

Access the identity graph viewer access-identity-graph-viewer

In the Platform UI, select Identities in the left navigation and then select Identity Graph from the list of tabs in the header.

The Identities workspace in the Experience Platform UI, with the Identity Graph tab selected.

To view an identity graph, provide an identity namespace and its corresponding value and then select View.

TIP
Select the table icon table icon to see a panel with a list of all identity namespaces available in your organization. You can use any of the identity namespaces as long as you have a valid identity value connected to them. For more information, read the identity namespace guide.

An identity namespace and its corresponding value, provided in the Identity Graph lookup screen.

Understanding the identity graph viewer interface

The identity graph viewer interface is made up of several elements that you can use to interact with and better understand your identity data.

The identity graph viewer interface.

The identity graph displays all of the identities linked to the identity namespace and value combination that you entered. Each node consists of an identity namespace and its corresponding value. You can select, hold, and drag any node to interact with the graph. Alternatively, you can hover over a node to see information about its corresponding identity value. Select View graph to hide or display the graph.

IMPORTANT
An identity graph requires a minimum of two linked identities to be generated and a valid identity namespace and value combination. The maximum number of identities that the graph viewer can display is 50. See the appendix section below for more information.

The identity graph viewer with five linked identities.

Select a link within the graph to see the dataset and batch ID that contribute to that link. Selecting a link also updates the right rail to provide more information on data source details, as well as properties like first established and last updated timestamps.

The identity link between the email and GAID nodes selected.

The Identities table provides a different view of your identity data, listing out the identity namespace and the identity value combination in a tabular format. Selecting a node in the graph will update the highlighted line item in the Identities table.

The Identities table with the list of identities linked within the graph.

Use the dropdown menu to sort through the graph data and highlight information on a specific identity namespace. For example, select Email from the menu to view data specific to the email identity namespace.

The Identities table sorted to only display email data.

The right rail displays information on a selected identity, including its last updated timestamp. The right rail also displays information on the data source that corresponds with the selected identity, including its batch ID, dataset name, dataset ID, and schema name.

The following table provides additional information on the data source properties displayed in the right rail:

Data source
Description
Batch ID
The auto-generated identifier that corresponds with your batch data.
Dataset ID
The auto-generated identifier that corresponds with your dataset.
Dataset name
The name of the dataset that contains your batch data.
Schema name
The name of the schema. The schema provides a set of rules that represent and validate the structure and format of data.

The right-rail, which displays identity data, as well as information data source.

You can also use the Data source to see a list of data sources that contribute to your identities. Select Data source for a tabular view of your datasets and batch IDs.

The data source tab selected.

Use the slider to filter graph data by the time at which identities were first established. By default, the identity graph viewer displays all identities linked within the graph. Hold and drag the slider to adjust the time to the last timestamp at which a new identity was linked to the graph. In the example below, the graph displays that the most recent identity link (GAID) was established on 08/19/2020, 4:29:29 PM.

The graph viewer timestamp slider selected.

Adjust the slider to see that another identity link (Email) was established on 08/19/2020, 4:25:30 PM.

The graph viewer timestamp slider adjusted to the last established new link.

You can also adjust the slider to see the earliest iteration of the graph. In the example below, the identity graph viewer displays that the graph was first created on 08/19/2020, 4:11:49 PM, with its first links being ECID, Email, and Phone.

The graph viewer timestamp slider adjusted to the first established new link.

Appendix

The following section provides additional information for working with the identity graph viewer.

Understanding error messages

Errors may happen when accessing the identity graph viewer. The following is a list of prerequisites and limitations to take note of when working with the identity graph viewer.

  • An identity value must exist in the selected namespace.
  • The identity graph viewer requires a minimum of two linked identities to generate. It is possible that there is only one identity value and no linked identities, and in this case, the value would only exist in Profile viewer.
  • The identity graph viewer cannot exceed the maximum of 50 identities.

error-screen

Access the identity graph viewer from datasets

You can also access the identity graph viewer using the datasets interface. From the datasets Browse page, select a dataset you want to interact with, and then select Preview dataset

preview-dataset

From the preview window, select a fingerprint icon to see the identities represented through the identity graph viewer.

TIP
The fingerprint icon only appears if the dataset has two or more identities.

fingerprint

Next steps

By reading this document, you have learned how to explore your customers’ identity graphs in the Platform UI. For more information on identities in Platform, please refer to the Identity Service overview

Changelog

Date
Action
2021-01
  • Added support for streaming ingested data and non-production sandbox.
  • Minor bug fixes.
2021-02
  • Identity graph viewer is made accessible through dataset preview.
  • Minor bug fixes.
  • Identity graph viewer is made Generally Available.
2023-01
  • UI updates.
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