Create and configure datastreams

Last update: May 8, 2025

CREATED FOR:

  • Developer

This document covers the steps for configuring a datastream in the UI.

Access the Datastreams workspace

You can create and manage datastreams in the Data Collection UI or Experience Platform UI by selecting Datastreams in the left navigation.

Datastreams tab in the Data Collection UI

The Datastreams tab displays a list of existing datastreams, including their friendly name, ID, and last modified date. To view its details and configure services, select the name of a datastream.

To reveal more options for a particular datastream, select the “more” icon (…). To update the basic configuration for the datastream, select Edit. To remove the datastream, select Delete.

Options to edit or delete an existing datastream

Create a datastream

To create a datastream, start by selecting New Datastream.

Select New Datastream

The datastream creation workflow appears, starting at the configuration step. From here, you must provide a name and optional description for the datastream.

If you configure a datastream for use in Experience Platform and you also use the Web SDK, you must also select an event-based Experience Data Model (XDM) schema to represent the data you plan on ingesting.

Basic configuration for a datastream

Configure geolocation and network lookup

Geolocation and network lookup settings help you define the level of granularity of the geographical and network-level data that you want to collect.

Expand the Geolocation and network lookup section to configure the settings described below.

Datastream configuration screen with the geolocation and network lookup settings highlighted.

SettingDescription
Geo Lookup

Enables geolocation lookups for the selected options based on the visitor’s IP address. Available options include:

  • Country: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo.countryCode
  • Postal Code: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo.postalCode
  • State/Province: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo.stateProvince
  • DMA: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo.dmaID
  • City: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo.city
  • Latitude: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo._schema.latitude
  • Longitude: Populates xdm.placeContext.geo._schema.longitude

Selecting City, Latitude, or Longitude provides coordinates up to two decimal points, regardless of what other options are selected. This is considered city-level granularity.

Not selecting any option disables geolocation lookups. Geolocation happens before IP Obfuscation, which means that it is not impacted by the IP Obfuscation setting.

Network Lookup

Enables network lookups for the selected options based on the visitor’s IP address. Available options include:

  • Mobile Carrier: Populates xdm.environment.carrier
  • Domain: Populates xdm.environment.domain
  • ISP: Populates xdm.environment.ISP
  • Connection Type: Populates xdm.environment.connectionType

If you enable any of the fields above for data collection, make sure that you correctly set the context array property when configuring the Web SDK.

Geolocation lookup fields use the context array string "placeContext", while network lookup fields use the context array string "environment".

Also, make sure that each desired XDM field exists in your schema. If it does not, you can add the Adobe-provided Environment Details field group to your schema.

Configure device lookup

The Device Lookup settings allow you to select device-specific information that you want to collect.

Expand the Device Lookup section to configure the settings described below.

Datastream configuration screen with the device lookup settings highlighted.

IMPORTANT
The settings shown in the table below are mutually exclusive. You cannot select both user agent information and device lookup data at the same time.
SettingDescription
Keep user agent and client hints headersSelect this option to only collect the information stored in the user agent string. This setting is selected by default. Populates xdm.environment.browserDetails.userAgent
Use device lookup to collect the following information

Select this option if you want to collect one or more of the following device-specific information:

  • Device information:

    • Device manufacturer: Populates xdm.device.manufacturer
    • Device model: Populates xdm.device.modelNumber
    • Marketing name: Populates xdm.device.model

  • Hardware information:

    • Hardware type: Populates xdm.device.type
    • Display height: Populates xdm.device.screenHeight
    • Display width: Populates xdm.device.screenWidth
    • Display color depth: Populates xdm.device.colorDepth

  • Browser information:

    • Browser vendor: Populates xdm.environment.browserDetails.vendor
    • Browser name: Populates xdm.environment.browserDetails.name
    • Browser version: Populates xdm.environment.browserDetails.version

  • Operating system information:

    • OS vendor: Populates xdm.environment.operatingSystemVendor
    • OS name: Populates xdm.environment.operatingSystem
    • OS version: Populates xdm.environment.operatingSystemVersion

Device lookup information cannot be collected along with user agent and client hints. Choosing to collect device information disables the collection of user agent and client hints, and vice versa.

Do not collect any device informationSelect this option if you do not want to collect any device lookup information. No device, hardware, browser, operating system, user agent, or client hint data is collected.

If you enable any of the fields above for data collection, make sure that you correctly set the context array property when configuring the Web SDK.

Device and hardware information use the context array string "device", while browser and operating system information use the context array string "environment".

Also, make sure that each desired XDM field exists in your schema. If it does not, you can add the Adobe-provided Environment Details field group to your schema.

Configure advanced options

To reveal advanced configration options, select Advanced Options. Here, you can configure additional datastream settings, such as IP obfuscation, First Party ID cookies, and more.

Advanced configuration options

IMPORTANT
You are responsible for ensuring that you have obtained all necessary permissions, consents, clearances, and authorization required under applicable laws and regulations to collect, process, and transmit personal data, including precise geolocation information.
Your IP address obfuscation selection does not affect the level of geolocation information that is derived from the IP address and sent to your configured Adobe solutions. Geolocation lookups must be limited or disabled separately.
SettingDescription
IP Obfuscation

Indicates the type of IP obfuscation to be applied to the datastream. Any processing based on customer IP is impacted by the IP obfuscation setting. This includes all Experience Cloud services which receive data from your datastream.

Available options:

  • None: Disables IP obfuscation. The full user IP address is sent via the datastream.

  • Partial: For IPv4 addresses, obfuscates the last octet of the user IP address. For IPv6 addresses, obfuscates the last 80 bits of the address.

    Examples:

    • IPv4: 1.2.3.4 -> 1.2.3.0
    • IPv6: 2001:0db8:1345:fd27:0000:ff00:0042:8329 -> 2001:0db8:1345:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000

  • Full: Obfuscates the entire IP address.

    Examples:

    • IPv4: 1.2.3.4 -> 0.0.0.0
    • IPv6: 2001:0db8:1345:fd27:0000:ff00:0042:8329 -> 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0

IP obfuscation impact on other Adobe products:

  • Adobe Target: The datastream-level IP obfuscation is applied before the IP obfuscation performed in Adobe Target, to all IP addresses present on the request. For example, if the datastream-level IP obfuscation option is set to Full and the Adobe Target IP obfuscation option is set to Last octet obfuscation, Adobe Target receives a fully obfuscated IP. If the datastream-level IP obfuscation option is set to Partial and the Adobe Target IP obfuscation option is set to Full, Adobe Target receives a partially obfuscated IP, and then applies the full obfuscation on it. The Adobe Target IP obfuscation is managed independently of the datastream one. See the Adobe Target documentation on IP obfuscation and geolocation for more details.
  • Audience Manager: The datastream-level IP obfuscation setting is applied before the IP obfuscation performed in Audience Manager, to all IP addresses present in the request. Any geolocation lookup done by Audience Manager is impacted by the datastream-level IP obfuscation option. A geolocation lookup in Audience Manager, based on a fully obfuscated IP, results in an unknown region, and any segments based on the resulted geolocation data are not realized. See the Audience Manager documentation on IP obfuscation for more details.
  • Adobe Analytics: If the datastream-level IP obfuscation setting is set to Full, Adobe Analytics treats the IP address as blank. This affects any Analytics processing that depends on IP address, such as geolocation lookups and IP filtering. For Analytics to receive the unobfuscated or partially obfuscated IP addresses, set the IP obfuscation setting to Partial or None. Partially obfuscated and unobfuscated IP addresses can be further obfuscated within Analytics. See the Adobe Analytics documentation for details on how to enable IP obfuscation in Analytics. If the IP address is fully obfuscated and the page hit has neither an ECID nor a VisitorID, then Analytics drops the hit rather than generating a Fallback ID, which is partially based on the IP address.
First Party ID CookieWhen enabled, this setting tells the Edge Network to refer to a specified cookie when looking up a first-party device ID, rather than looking up this value in the Identity Map.

When enabling this setting, you must provide the name of the cookie which should store the ID.
Third Party ID SyncID syncs can be grouped into containers to allow different ID syncs to be run at different times. When enabled, this setting lets you specify which container of ID syncs is run for this datastream.
Third Party ID Sync Container IDThe numeric ID of the container to be used for third party ID sync.
Container ID OverridesIn this section, you can define additional third party ID sync container IDs which you can use to override the default one.
Access Type

Defines the authentication type that the Edge Network accepts for the datastream.

  • Mixed Authentication: When this option is selected, the Edge Network accepts both authenticated and unauthenticated requests. Select this option when you plan to use the Web SDK or Mobile SDK, along with the Edge Network API.
  • Authenticated Only: When this option is selected, the Edge Network only accepts authenticated requests. Select this option when you plan to use only the Edge Network API and want to prevent any unauthenticated requests from being processed by the Edge Network.
Media AnalyticsEnables processing of streaming tracking data for Edge Network integration via Experience Platform SDKs or Media Edge API. Learn about Media Analytics from the documentation.

From here, if you are configuring your datastream for Experience Platform, follow the tutorial on Data Prep for Data Collection to map your data to an Experience Platform event schema before returning to this guide. Otherwise, select Save and continue to the next section.

View datastream details

After configuring a new datastream or selecting an existing one to view, the details page for that datastream appears. Here you can find further information about the datastream, including its ID.

Datastream details page.

From the datastream details screen, you can add services to enable capabilities from the Adobe Experience Cloud products you have access to. You can also edit the datastream’s basic configuration, update its mapping rules, copy the datastream, or delete it entirely.

Add services to a datastream

On the details page of a datastream, select Add Service to start adding available services for that datastream.

Select Add Service to continue.

On the next screen, use the dropdown menu to select a service to configure for this datastream. Only the services that you have access to are shown in this list.

Select a service from the list.

Select the desired service, fill in the configuration options that appear, and then select Save to add the service to the datastream. All added services appear in the details view for the datastream.

Services added to a datastream

The subsections below describe the configuration options for each service.

NOTE
Each service configuration contains an Enabled toggle that is automatically activated when the service is selected. To disable the selected service for this datastream, select the Enabled toggle again.

Adobe Analytics settings

This service controls whether and how data is sent to Adobe Analytics. See Sending data to Adobe Analytics.

Adobe Analytics datastream settings.

SettingDescription
Report Suite ID(Required) The ID of the Analytics report suite that you want to send data to. This ID can be found in the Adobe Analytics UI under Admin > ReportSuites. If multiple report suites are specified, then data is copied to each report suite.
Visitor ID namespace(Optional) The namespace you want to use for the Adobe Analytics visitorID. When you send an event with a value specified for this namespace, it will be automatically used as the visitorID in Analytics.
Report Suite OverridesIn this section, you can add additional report suite IDs that you can use to override the default one.

Adobe Audience Manager settings

This service controls whether and how data is sent to Adobe Audience Manager. All that is needed to send data to Audience Manager is to enable this section. The other settings are optional but encouraged.

Adobe Audience Manage datastream settings.

SettingDescription
Cookie Destinations EnabledAllows the SDK to share segment information via cookie destinations from Audience Manager.
URL Destinations EnabledAllows the SDK to share segment information via URL destinations from Audience Manager.

Adobe Experience Platform settings

IMPORTANT
When enabling a datastream for Experience Platform, take note of the Experience Platform sandbox that you are currently using, as displayed in the top ribbon of the UI.
Selected sandbox
Sandboxes are virtual partitions in Adobe Experience Platform that allow you to isolate your data and implementations from others in your organization. Once a datastream is created, its sandbox cannot be changed. For more details about the role of sandboxes in Experience Platform, see the sandboxes documentation.

This service controls whether and how data is sent to Adobe Experience Platform.

Adobe Experience Platform datastream settings.

SettingDescription
Event Dataset(Required) Select the Experience Platform dataset that customer event data will be streamed to. This schema must use the XDM ExperienceEvent class. To add additional datasets, select Add Event Dataset.
Profile DatasetSelect the Experience Platform dataset that customer attribute data will be sent to. This schema must use the XDM Individual Profile class.
Offer DecisioningEnables Offer Decisioning for Web SDK implementations. See the guide on using Offer Decisioning with Web SDK for more implementation details.

For more information on Offer Decisioning capabilities, refer to the Adobe Journey Optimizer documentation.
Edge SegmentationEnables edge segmentation for this datastream. When the Web SDK or Edge Network API sends data through a datastream with edge segmentation enabled, any updated audience memberships for the profile in question are sent back in the response.

You can use this option in combination with Personalization Destinations for same-page and next-page personalization use cases through edge destinations or Offer Decisioning.
Personalization DestinationsWhen enabling this after enabling the Edge Segmentation checkbox, this option allows the datastream to connect to personalization destinations, such as Custom Personalization.

Refer to the destinations documentation for specific steps on configuring personalization destinations.
Adobe Journey OptimizerEnables Adobe Journey Optimizer for this datastream.

Enabling this option allows the datastream to return personalized content from web and app-based inbound campaigns in Adobe Journey Optimizer. This option requires Edge Segmentation to be active. If Edge Segmentation is unchecked, this option is grayed out.

This option also requires the selected dataset to use a schema that includes the Experience Event - Proposition Interactions field group. This field group is used to record all user interactions with Adobe Journey Optimizer campaigns and experiences.

Adobe Target settings

This service controls whether and how data is sent to Adobe Target.

Adobe Target datastream settings.

SettingDescription
Property TokenTarget allows customers to control permissions by using properties. For more information on properties, see the guide on configuring enterprise permissions in the Target documentation.

The property token can be found in the Adobe Target UI under Setup > Properties.
Target Environment IDEnvironments in Adobe Target help you manage your implementation through all stages of development. This setting specifies which environment you are going to use with this datastream.

Best practice is to set this differently for each of your dev, stage, and prod datastream environments to keep things simple. However, if you already have Adobe Target environments defined, you can use those.
Target Third Party ID namespaceThe identity namespace for the mbox3rdPartyId you want to use for this datastream. If you use a Customer Attributes integration with Adobe Target or use thirdPartyId to update or create profiles via Adobe Target Profiles API, you must provide a namespace value of your choice. You must use this namespace in the IdentityMap section of your XDM schema to send the customerID or thirdPartyId used in your Customer Attributes file uploads or in your Profile Update API calls. See the guide on implementing mbox3rdPartyId with the Web SDK for more information.
Property Token OverridesIn this section, you can define additional property tokens that you can use to override the default one.