Internal Groups
Internal groups are a great way to build and organize internal or third-party test groups. They provide insight into your SDK or API logs and are useful when testing your SDK integration. You can create an unlimited number of custom internal groups with up to 1,000 users.
We also recommend checking out our Testing and Troubleshooting Braze Learning course, which covers how to use internal groups to conduct your own troubleshooting and debugging.
Prerequisites
To create and manage internal groups, you need the Access Dev Console permission for your workspace.
Creating an internal group
To create an internal group:
- Go to Settings > Internal Groups.
- Select Create internal group.
- Give your group a name, such as “Email test group”.
- Choose one or more group types, as listed in the following table.
| Group type | Description |
|---|---|
| User Event Group | Use this to verify events or logs from your test device. |
| Content Test Group | Use this across push, email, and in-app messages to send a rendered copy of the message. |
| Seed Group | Automatically sends a copy of the email to everyone in the Seed Group upon send. |
Adding test users
After you create your internal group, add test users as members of that group.
- From your internal group’s management page, select Add test users.
- Choose from the following methods for searching and selecting your test users.
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Add identified user | Search for the user by their external user ID, email address, phone number, or push token. |
| Add anonymous user | Search by IP address. Then, provide a name for each test user you add. This is the name that all event logs are associated with on the Event User Log page. |
| Bulk add users | Copy and paste a list of email addresses or external IDs. You can add only users who are already known in the dashboard. For more information, refer to User import. |
Content Test Groups
Similar to sending a preview test of a message, the Content Test Group saves you time and lets you launch tests to a pre-defined list of Braze users simultaneously. This is available for push, in-app messages, SMS, email, and Content Cards in Braze. Only groups tagged as Content Test Groups are available in the preview section of a message.
SMS test messages can only be sent to valid phone numbers in the database.
Select individual Braze users or any number of internal groups to send the message to. If your message includes any Liquid or other dynamic personalization, Braze uses the attributes available for each user to personalize the message contents. For users who have no attributes, Braze uses the default value set.
Additionally, if you preview the message as a random user, a custom user, or an existing user, you can send that previewed version instead. Clearing the checkbox lets you send based on each user’s attributes versus the previewed version.
If you use an IP pool to send out an email, select which IP pool to send the email from by selecting the pool from the dropdown available.
Seed Groups
Seed Groups are only supported for the email channel. Add users to a Seed Group to send copies of each email variant message to all members of the group.
Seed Groups aren’t available for API campaigns, but you can include Seed Groups using an API-triggered entry in the campaign. Use this to measure deliverability metrics and to keep a record of your email content for historical and archival purposes.
After creating an internal group and tagging it to be used as a Seed Group, select it from the Target Audiences step of the campaign editor, or on the Send Settings step in a Canvas.
Seed emails will have [SEED] appended to the start of the email subject line. Note that seed emails do not:
- Increment sends in the dashboard analytics.
- Impact email analytics or retargeting.
- Update a user profile’s Campaign Received list.
- Impact frequency capping.
- Account for or impact the delivery speed rate limits.
Subscription behavior
Seed sends are designed for internal QA and review, so they intentionally bypass subscription checks for the seeded dashboard users. This means users with valid email addresses who are part of a Seed Group receive the message even if they are not subscribed. However, the message must be configured to send seed copies to that group.
If your Seed Group members report not seeing the message in their inbox, check that they’re listed in the internal group, verify that your subject lines are different and that Gmail has not bundled the emails together, or have them check their spam folders.
For campaigns
When composing an email campaign, edit your Seed Groups in the Target Audiences section of the editor.
If you configure a Seed Group to automatically attach to all campaigns, it only applies to new campaigns. It does not apply when you copy existing campaigns. You must manually apply your desired seed groups to the copied campaign in the Target Audiences section.
Seed Groups send to each email variant once and are delivered the first time your user receives that particular variant. For scheduled messages, this typically is the first time the campaign launches. For action-based or API-triggered campaigns, this is the time the first user is sent a message.
If your campaign is multivariate and your variant has a 0% send percentage, it isn’t sent to Seed Groups. Additionally, if the variant has already been sent and hasn’t been updated to resend in Edit Seed Groups on the Target step, it isn’t sent again by default.
If you have a recurring campaign and any one of the variants is updated, you can choose to send again to only the updated variants or all variants, or turn off Seed Group sending upon update.
For Canvas
Seed groups in Canvas work similarly to any triggered campaign. Braze automatically detects all steps that contain an email message and sends to these when your user first reaches that particular email step.
If an email step was updated after the Seed Group was mailed, Braze presents the option to only send to updated steps, all steps, or turn off seeds.
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