Consents and Preferences field group

Consents and Preferences is a standard field group for the XDM Individual Profile class that captures consent and preference information for an individual customer.

NOTE
Since this field group is only compatible with XDM Individual Profile, it cannot be used for XDM ExperienceEvent schemas. If you want to include consent and preference data in your Experience Event schema, add the Consent for Privacy, Personalization and Marketing Preferences data type to the schema through the use of a custom field group instead.

Field group structure structure

The Consents and Preferences field group provides a single object-type field, consents, to capture consent and preference information. This field extends the Consent for Privacy, Personalization and Marketing Preferences data type, removing the adID field and adding an idSpecific map field.

TIP
See the guide on exploring XDM resources to for steps on how to look up any XDM resource and inspect its structure in the Platform UI.

The following JSON shows an example of the type of data that the Consents and Preferences field group can process. For information on how to use most of the fields provided by the field group, refer to the guide on the Consents and Preferences data type. The subsections below focus on the unique attributes that the field group adds to the data type.

{
  "consents": {
    "collect": {
      "val": "VI"
    },
    "share": {
      "val": "y"
    },
    "personalize": {
      "content": {
        "val": "y"
      }
    },
    "marketing": {
      "preferred": "email",
      "any": {
        "val": "y"
      },
      "email": {
        "val": "y"
      }
    },
    "idSpecific": {
      "ECID": {
        "37784337855396895622558625508046772577": {
          "adID": {
            "val": "n",
          },
          "share": {
            "val": "n"
          },
          "marketing": {
            "push": {
              "val": "n",
              "time": "2020-09-30T01:02:33+00:00",
              "reason": "not relevant"
            }
          }
        }
      },
      "email": {
        "john@xyz.com": {
          "marketing": {
            "email": {
              "val": "y"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    },
    "metadata": {
      "time": "2019-01-01T15:52:25+00:00"
    }
  }
}
TIP
You can generate sample JSON data for any XDM schema that you define in Experience Platform in order to help visualize how your customer consent and preference data should be mapped. See the following documentation for more information:

idSpecific

idSpecific can be used when a particular consent or preference does not universally apply to a customer, but is restricted to a single device or ID. For example, a customer can opt out of receiving emails to one address, while potentially allowing emails on another.

IMPORTANT
Channel-level consents and preferences (i.e. those provided under consents outside of idSpecific) apply to all IDs within that channel. Therefore, all channel-level consents and preferences directly effect whether equivalent ID- or device-specific settings are honored:
  • If the customer has opted out at the channel level, then any equivalent consents or preferences in idSpecific are ignored.
  • If the channel-level consent or preference is not set, or the customer has opted in, then the equivalent consents or preferences in idSpecific are honored.

Each key in the idSpecific object represents a specific identity namespace recognized by Adobe Experience Platform Identity Service. While you can define your own custom namespaces to categorize different identifiers, it is recommended that you use one of the standard namespaces provided by Identity Service to reduce storage sizes for Real-Time Customer Profile. For more information on identity namespaces, see the identity namespace overview in the Identity Service documentation.

The keys for each namespace object represent the unique identity values that the customer has set preferences for. Each identity value can contain a complete set of consents and preferences, formatted in the same way as consents.

"idSpecific": {
  "email": {
    "jdoe@example.com": {
      "marketing": {
        "email": {
          "val": "n"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "ECID": {
    "37784337855396895622558625508046772577": {
      "collect": {
        "val": "y"
      },
      "adID": {
        "val": "n"
      },
      "marketing": {
        "push": {
          "val": "n"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Within marketing objects provided in the idSpecific section, the any and preferred fields are not supported. These fields can only be configured at the user level. In addition, the idSpecific marketing preferences for email, sms, and push do not support subscriptions fields.

There is also a consent that can only be provided in the idSpecific section: adID. This field is covered in the subsection below.

adID

The adID consent represents the customer’s consent for whether an advertiser ID (IDFA or GAID) can be used to link the customer across apps on this device. This value can only be configured under the ECID identity namespace in the idSpecific section, and cannot be set for other namespaces or at the user level for this field group.

"idSpecific": {
  "ECID": {
    "37784337855396895622558625508046772577": {
      "collect": {
        "val": "y"
      },
      "adID": {
        "val": "n"
      },
      "marketing": {
        "push": {
          "val": "n"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
NOTE
You are not expected to set this value directly, since the Adobe Experience Platform Mobile SDK automatically sets it when appropriate.

Ingesting data using the field group ingest

In order to use the Consents and Preferences field group to ingest consent data from your customers, you must create a dataset based on a schema that contains that field group.

See the tutorial on creating a schema in the UI for steps on how to assign field groups to fields. Once you have created a schema containing a field with the Consents and Preferences field group, refer to the section on creating a dataset in the dataset user guide, following the steps to create a dataset with an existing schema.

IMPORTANT
If you want to send consent data to Real-Time Customer Profile, it is required that you create a Profile-enabled schema based on the XDM Individual Profile class that contains the Consents and Preferences field group. The dataset that you create based on that schema must also be enabled for Profile. Refer to the tutorials linked above for specific steps related to Real-Time Customer Profile requirements for schemas and datasets.
In addition, you must also ensure that your merge policies are configured to prioritize the dataset(s) that contain the latest consent and preference data, in order for customer profiles to be updated correctly. See the overview on merge policies for more information.

When a customer changes their consents or preferences on your website, these changes should be collected and immediately enforced using the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK. If a customer opts out of data collection, all data collection must immediately cease. If a customer opts out of personalization, then there should be no personalization present on the next page they visit.

Next steps

This document covered the structure and use of the Consents and Preferences field group. For more information on the other fields provided by the field group, see the document on the Consent for Privacy, Personalization and Marketing Preferences data type.

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