Managing custom data

Learn how to pre-populate custom data in your campaigns and segments, or blocklist data that is no longer useful.

Pre-populating custom data

There may be times when you’d like to set up campaigns and segments using custom data before your development team has integrated that custom data. Braze allows you to pre-populate custom events and attributes on the dashboard before these pieces of data start tracking so that these events and attributes are available for use in dropdowns and as part of the campaign creation process.

To pre-populate custom events and attributes, go to Data Settings and select either Custom Events or Custom Attributes. Then add a new custom attribute or custom event.

For custom attributes, select a data type for this attribute (for instance, boolean or string). An attribute’s data type will determine the segmentation filters available for that attribute.

Custom events and custom attributes are case-sensitive. Keep this in mind when your development team integrates these custom events or attributes later. They must name the custom events or attributes exactly as you named them here, or Braze will generate a different custom event or attribute.

Blocklisting custom data

You may occasionally identify custom attributes, custom events, or purchase events that either consume too many data points, are no longer useful to your marketing strategy, or were recorded in error. To stop this data from being sent to Braze, you can blocklist a custom data object while your engineering team works to remove it from the backend of your app or website.

Blocklisting prevents a particular custom data object from being recorded by Braze going forward. Blocklisting does not remove data from user profiles or retroactively decrease the amount of data points incurred for that custom data object. For specific details, refer to Custom event and attribute management.

Deleting custom data

After you have blocklisted the custom data object and removed references to it from your app or website, the custom data can be deleted. For help deleting custom data, please reach out to your customer success manager or the Braze Support team.

Deleting custom data does the following:

• Removes the custom attribute, custom event, or purchase event from segment filter selections and analytics pages.
• Removes the custom attribute, custom event, or purchase event from the respective page under Data Settings.