Hi Team! This questions is probably only (swiftly) understandable by people who know and use Braze (in combination with server-side GTM).
Regarding the follow-up question I’ve posted on Github; does anyone know if anyone can make the Braze external_id field optional in the Snowplow GTM-Tag, so that it could be used to alias new, unknown users? To create a new user alias, the external_id has to be unset (optional).
In the current state - I don’t think so as it the current template expects a non-null value for external_id. From the sounds of the Braze docs it sounds like the external_id needs to be omitted entirely (rather than set as an empty string) so this is achievable but would require modifications to the template to omit this property.
Hi @jatc and welcome to Snowplow community!
Thank you for raising this!
(also opened this new GitHub issue to track it)
Exactly as @mike said, currently the external_id is required.
It would be definitely great to introduce support for user aliasing!
Braze’s users/track endpoint requires one of external_id, user_alias, or braze_id. So it definitely sounds possible that the Tag also provides the alternative to use a user alias object in the Identity Settings (and instead of external_id, to configure alias_name and alias_label).
How does that sound from your point of view? Is this what you have in mind?
Thank you @mike for summarizing my problem in a more specific manner and @Ada for the welcome and helpful input. I could try your proposed solution, but don’t exactly know how. I’ve tried to approximate what you’ve described here:
But again, I’m unsure what to put into the external_id field. Would you mind expanding on your plan of action? Do you mean to fill in an alias_name instead of it?
Hello @jatc !
I am afraid that currently this is not possible to achieve.
What i described is a possible solution to be implemented in the next release of the Braze Tag, that would allow you to just specify alias_name and alias_label instead of hard-requiring the external_id.
The Snowplow Entity Mapping table you are using in the screenshot, allows you to customize the mapping of Snowplow properties to Braze event or user properties (so it cannot be used to create the user alias object). You can read more about it in the Braze Tag documentation here.
Alright, thank you @Ada for clarifying. I appreciate your input and the time you’ve taken.
Hello @jatc!
We just released Braze Tag for GTM-SS v0.2.0 that allows you to create the User Alias object and use it as the Braze user indentifier. You can also choose whether to allow aliasing new unknown users through the Update existing users only checkbox in the Tag configuration.
Thank you for the suggestion and please let us know what you think!
