The following are some of the frequently asked questions about working with your organisation’s Catalogue and its fields:
How do I choose the right category for a field?
The category decides the attribute type and how values are stored — Event and Campaign fields append time-series data, while categories such as User Trait, Product, and Consent keep one value that is overwritten after ID resolution — and it cannot be changed after the field is created. Review the behaviour of each category in Categories for adding Catalogue fields and the broader grouping in Taxonomy before you save.
When should I create a custom field instead of using a standard field?
Standard fields (universal identifiers, cookies, and natively tracked information) are created automatically with your account — create a custom field only when no standard field covers the data point you want to store. See Standard Fields in Catalogue; note that reserved field names can never be reused.
What is the difference between Raw PII, PII, and masking?
The Raw PII setting (shown as “Is this PII data?” on some category forms) is one mechanism: setting it to Yes encrypts the field before ingestion, masks it across the UI, and excludes it from filtering — the data is decrypted only for activation to channels that accept raw PII, and only CDP Admin and Integrations Admin roles can unmask values in Customer 360. Raw PII is not supported on Object and List data types and cannot be changed after creation; a separate masking option hides field values in the UI for data types the Raw PII flag cannot cover, such as timestamps. See Understand the Basic Fields, Understand the Advance Fields, and Data Types in Catalogue.
What happens if I rename or delete a catalogue field?
You cannot rename the stored field or delete it: the field name, category, data type, and Raw PII setting are fixed once a field is added — only TTL, No. of IDs, and (until the field is added) Group Name can be edited — though you can still adjust a field’s display name while editing a mapping. To retire a field, Hide it: this removes it from new use in Audiences, Journeys, Source Mapping, and Destinations and drops its saved mappings, while anything already using it keeps working and the field can be unhidden later. See Edit a Catalogue Field and the Hide notes in Components of the Catalogue Screen.
How does TTL work?
TTL defines how many days a value stays active, counted from the day it was last updated — re-ingesting the same value extends its life — and once it expires, the value is dropped from the profile. The default is Forever (allowed range 1–3650 days), and TTL edits apply only to data ingested from that point onward. See Time-to-Live.
Can I change a field's data type after creation?
No — the catalogue data type is fixed; if incoming source data doesn’t match it, override the source data type or use an enricher, and if the source type was mis-detected altogether (for example, a list of objects read as String), contact your Zeotap representative.
The data type is chosen when the field is created — it cannot be changed afterwards.
Note that an override takes effect at ingestion time only: features that read the raw source schema, such as the Ingestion Criteria picker, still see the field’s original shape — so a source field that started as a List remains ineligible for ingestion filtering even after being overridden to String.
What is the difference between the ID category and the ID Metadata category?
An ID field stores the identifier value itself — it participates in identity resolution and supports the TTL and No. of IDs settings — while an ID Metadata field stores descriptive facts about an identifier (such as its status or hierarchy) and must be linked to that ID’s Group Name to work. See Categories for adding Catalogue fields.
