Understanding the User Account Structure

SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC) offers a flexible account structure designed to centralize the storage of all user data, creating a rich SAP customer profile. This structure allows you to configure properties and attributes of profile fields, which can be used by both first-party and social/federation platforms. By centralizing the storage and indexing of user data in real-time, including consent, preferences, and progressive profiling data, CDC eliminates fragmented customer identity information. 

The system data namespace includes various timestamp fields such as creation time, last login/update time, etc. These fields are managed by the platform and cannot be edited directly but can only be queried through RESTful APIs or in the Console. 

Profile Management (IDS) is a cloud-hosted database that consolidates user data acquired from various sources including social and traditional registration, site activity, multiple domains, or mobile apps. Users' accounts are automatically created in Profile Management (IDS) after Social Login/Registration or standard Registration.

On the highest level, a user's account in Profile Management consists of the following components:

• PROFILE: This fixed structure includes basic information such as first name, last name, email, and up to 35 fields consolidated from social/site identities. While the fields themselves are fixed, you can configure whether they are mandatory. These fixed fields are used for integrations with platforms like Facebook and Google.
• IDENTITIES: This is an array of objects representing the user's social identities. Each Identity object contains imported data from the corresponding social network.
• DATA: This custom layer is used for storing additional user data, such as address, postcode, or zip code. It allows flexible data storage beyond the fixed profile fields.
• SUBSCRIPTIONS: This is only used by the Legacy Account Model; this component contains information related to user subscriptions but not consent or preferences.
• PREFERENCES: This section contains customers' consent preferences.
• SYSTEM DATA: This immutable data provided by the platform includes account creation, login timestamps, etc.

Social Sync - The user's social network profile data (available after Registration/Social Login) is automatically imported, stored in Profile Management, and made available for searching. In addition, whenever your Facebook users update their profiles on Facebook, the changes will sync automatically to Profile Management. CDC automatically subscribes to the following Facebook fields: birthday, books, education, email, first_name, hometown, last_name, likes, link, locale, location, movies, music, name, relationship_status, religion, verified, timezone, and work.

Dynamic Schema - The storage is built with a dynamic schema that can seamlessly process massive amounts of user data optimally. Having a dynamic schema means that you may store any custom data you have with no constraints on its structure. You don't have to know how your custom data will look; it doesn't have to look the same for all objects. There's no need to go through schema creation or modification when the data structure changes.

Most of the social network federations are, in fact, based on openid connect.

Best practice: Turn off dynamic schema.

For more information, refer to the User Profile documentation in the SAP Help Portal.

• The data returned from social providers upon a login/social registration is mapped to the profile object using Social Sync.
• CDC uses Social Sync to monitor and track Facebook Webhooks.  Social Sync enables your customer's account data to be automatically updated whenever your Facebook users update their profiles on Facebook; these changes will sync automatically to their existing accounts in CDC.
• When a customer deletes your site's Facebook application from their Facebook Apps, CDC automatically deletes all the Facebook data kept in the user's account except for the following fields: snuid, firstName, lastName, nickname, profilePhoto, and gender. This happens automatically, and your site's admin requires no action.

One of the major features of Profile Management in SAP Customer Data Cloud is the SocialSync.

The user's social networks profile data, available after Social Login/Registration, is automatically imported and stored in Profile Management and available for searching. In addition, whenever your Facebook users update their profiles on Facebook, the changes will sync automatically to Profile Management. CDC automatically subscribes to the following Facebook fields: birthday, books, education, email, first_name, hometown, last_name, likes, link, locale, location, movies, music, name, relationship_status, religion, verified, timezone, and work. 

As the profile object is mapped with the data that can be returned from social providers, the Profile object is pre-defined and cannot be modified.

For more information, refer to the following Profile Management - IDS documentation in the SAP Help Portal.