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KumarRishii
KumarRishii
Level 5
July 15, 2025
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Is it mandatory to enable a Primary Identity when streaming data from a website into AEP

  • July 15, 2025
  • 3 replies
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Is it mandatory to enable a Primary Identity when streaming data from a website into Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)? If the Primary Identity is not enabled in an event-based schema, will the data fail to appear in Customer Journey Analytics (CJA) Workspace?

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Best answer by Parvesh_Parmar

Hello @kumarrishii , 

 

As far as I know, for a profile schema, if you want to enable it for the Profile Service, having a primary key is mandatory.

 

I believe it’s the same for event-based schemas. You can try to enable an event-based schema for the Profile Service—normally, you will get a pop-up asking to add a primary key before enabling. If that prompt appears (which I believe it will), then the primary key is mandatory; otherwise, it’s not required.

 

The primary key is required for data ingestion into the Profile Service.

 

But if you just want to ingest data into the Data Lake, then a primary key is not mandatory for either profile or event schemas.

 

Kind regards,

Parvesh

3 replies

Parvesh_Parmar
Community Advisor
Parvesh_ParmarCommunity AdvisorAccepted solution
Community Advisor
July 16, 2025

Hello @kumarrishii , 

 

As far as I know, for a profile schema, if you want to enable it for the Profile Service, having a primary key is mandatory.

 

I believe it’s the same for event-based schemas. You can try to enable an event-based schema for the Profile Service—normally, you will get a pop-up asking to add a primary key before enabling. If that prompt appears (which I believe it will), then the primary key is mandatory; otherwise, it’s not required.

 

The primary key is required for data ingestion into the Profile Service.

 

But if you just want to ingest data into the Data Lake, then a primary key is not mandatory for either profile or event schemas.

 

Kind regards,

Parvesh

Parvesh Parmar – Adobe Community Advisor https://www.linkedin.com/in/parvesh-parmar/
    D
    Adobe Employee
    dwright-adobeAdobe Employee
    Adobe Employee
    July 16, 2025

    Two questions:

    1. Is this a Web SDK implementation?
    2. Are you just using CJA? Or will you also be using an application that uses Profiles like Real-Time CDP or Journey Optimizer?

    If it's a Web SDK implementation, the typical way to capture identities is through the identityMap field. By default, identityMap is part of all XDM ExperienceEvent schemas. You don't need to explicitly label an identity field or that it's a primary identity in the schema. When you enable the schema for Profile, there will be a dialog where you indicate that your primary id is coming from identityMap. There is a bunch of content about this in our Web SDK tutorial: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/platform-learn/implement-web-sdk/overview

     

    When using Profile (e.g. in RTCDP and AJO), having a primary identity is necessary for storing the profile fragment. Traditionally this has been done in the identityMap. On a website with Web SDK, when a user is not logged in and anonymous, the ECID will automatically be sent as the primary identity. You don't need to do anything. You won't see it in the call leaving the browser, but the Edge Network will attach it to the call when it sends the data to Platform and it is visible in the Assurance debugging tool. When the user authenticates, you need to manually add the authenticated id to the identityMap. There are still some reasons to label this authenticated id as the primary id in identityMap (the RTCDP->Target integration is a little better), but the recommended technique is to use the newish Identity Map Linking Rules feature, which is a UI configuration which allows you assign priority to the incoming ids for event data. . This feature handles shared device scenarios that can lead to profile problems (e.g. you log in to a website on your laptop, and then i log into the same website using your laptop). There are a few videos about this new feature here: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/platform-learn/tutorials/identities/graph-linking-rules/overview

     

    That's a lot of info I just dumped on you, but I hope it helps. Let me know if you have more questions. I don't think the lack of a primary id would impact your CJA data.

     

      Sukrity_Wadhwa
      Community Manager
      Sukrity_WadhwaCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      July 29, 2025

      Hi @kumarrishii,

      Were you able to resolve this query with the help of the provided solutions, or do you still need further assistance? Please let us know. If any of the answers were helpful in moving you closer to a resolution, even partially, we encourage you to mark the one that helped the most as the 'Correct Reply.'

      Thank you!

      Sukrity Wadhwa
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