---
title: "Data Validation"
slug: "insider-one-data-validation"
description: "Covers Insider One Data Validation, including validating website integration data, checking user attributes and events, identifying data issues, and verifying implementation accuracy."
updated: 2026-07-31T10:33:45Z
published: 2026-07-31T10:33:51Z
canonical: "academy.insiderone.com/insider-one-data-validation"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://academy.insiderone.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Data Validation

Imagine Sporzy, a popular online retailer, preparing for its largest holiday sale of the year. The marketing team had carefully planned special offers, audience segments, and conversion tracking, all powered by detailed user data flowing into their central data platform. Their goal was to re-engage users who viewed products but did not complete a purchase by sending targeted emails and notifications with personalized discounts.

However, an unnoticed issue occurred during a recent mobile app update. The price attribute of the Purchase event, expected to always be a numeric value, began arriving in incorrect formats. Instead of numbers, some price values were sent as text strings or empty values.

This seemingly small data issue quickly caused widespread problems:

- **Incorrect Audiences**

The segment targeting “users who purchased items over $100” suddenly expanded far beyond its intended size. Because the system could not properly interpret malformed price values, thousands of users were incorrectly included in the segment.

- **Ineffective Personalization**

Users received promotions for products they had already purchased or offers that did not align with their actual purchase behavior. This resulted in confusion, frustration, and decreased engagement.

- **Campaign Failures**

Critical campaigns, such as cart abandonment recovery, failed to execute correctly. Events like **add_to_cart** were missing, duplicated, or malformed across certain data sources, preventing the campaigns from triggering as designed.

- **Lost Revenue**

Marketing spend was misallocated to the wrong audiences, producing low returns. Teams spent valuable time manually inspecting individual user profiles to diagnose the issue—an inefficient process that failed to reveal the full scope of the problem. By the time the root cause was identified, revenue had already been impacted.

This scenario highlights a common and costly challenge: without a reliable system to validate data quality, configuration issues can silently disrupt campaigns, delay execution, and cause significant financial losses.

## Data Validation: Protection against Data Errors

Critical user data from multiple sources, such as websites, mobile apps, internal systems, and third-party platforms, is continuously sent into the central data layer. This data powers segmentation, personalization, campaign execution, and performance measurement across all products.

When data is malformed, missing, or misconfigured, these systems cannot function reliably. To address this, Insider One has the Data Validation system, an automated mechanism designed to proactively detect data quality issues. Data Validation continuously inspects incoming data for correctness and consistency, identifying problems early and eliminating the need for manual troubleshooting.

By surfacing issues as soon as they occur, Data Validation helps ensure stable campaign performance, accurate targeting, and trustworthy analytics, protecting both revenue and customer experience.

## Why does Data Validation matter?

The Data Validation system is designed to help customers easily and confidently set up and verify their data.

- Issues in data formats, missing details, or differences across sources can sometimes affect campaign performance, making it difficult to pinpoint the underlying data issue.
- Customers currently have to check different tools individually (like user profiles, test lab, and integration wizard), which can make finding problems slow and inefficient.
- It can be challenging for customers to get a clear view of how data is flowing across all their different sources, like web, mobile, or API.
- Customers are typically made aware of data issues only after campaign results are impacted, rather than being notified right away.
- Marketing and technical teams may find it difficult to track setup progress together, which can occasionally result in configuration inconsistencies and slower resolution times.

The data validation system checks and monitors the data to avoid mistakes that might lead to wasted effort and delays in getting started.

## How does Data Validation work?

The data validation system offers a full set of features to help.

### Automatic detection and checking

The system will automatically check the data to detect any data errors. This includes spotting wrong data types, incorrect value formats, empty values, and missing required event parameters.

#### Incorrect data type

The image below shows an example of an incorrectly sent Session ID event parameter. It should be sent as a *string*, but the customer sent it as a *number* in this sample case.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/29b4f5ca-3ab6-404c-9ec2-eb5507994949.png)

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/a7e74824-79e5-4055-bb8d-1344b60b1505.png)

#### Invalid value format example

The customer sent the email address in the wrong format. It **cannot** start with an underscore **(_)**.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/d037cc9a-95df-48d1-a2a9-e5794b80642e.png)

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/e8f30eb8-d546-4300-b7ff-3d3cb88c6631.png)

#### Null values

The customer was supposed to send the city attribute; however, the system received this attribute empty.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/9d32a1b9-7395-4cb7-b9a7-05d830308272.png)

#### Required event parameters

The system verifies the required event parameters for specific default events to ensure customers send them along with the event. For example, the **quantity** is a mandatory parameter for the **purchase** event. Without it, segmentation and analytics will fail.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/a773042f-0b61-491f-97d7-70255724db1f.png)

### Guided help

When a problem is found, the system clearly explains it and suggests how to fix it, making it easier to solve.

### Filtering options

Customers can filter errors by data source (e.g., web, app, API), user data category, error types, and error severity to easily find and focus on specific issues. This helps manage reported issues more effectively and address problems across different data sources.

### Insider ID information

For each sample error, customers can see the Insider ID of the affected user. This allows them to quickly navigate to the user's profile page to investigate and debug the specific issue for that individual user.

### Recent error listing

The system will specifically list errors detected in the last three days. This provides a focused view of the most current data issues, ensuring that recent problems are prioritized and addressed promptly.

### Ability to share error details

Customers can share the error details through email.

#### Guided Error Resolution: "Learn How to Fix"

Every error card now has a Learn how to fix action that opens a step-by-step side drawer explaining what went wrong and how to resolve it, tailored to the error type and source.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-Z3GNFJK3.png)

#### Configurable Email Alerts

You can set up email alerts so your team is notified as soon as new data validation errors are detected.

To set up email notifications:

1. Go to **Rule Settings** and click the **Notification Settings** tab.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785490979101.png)
2. Click **Create Alert** and fill in the required fields.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785491055007.png)
3. Give the alert a name, then select the user data scope and data sources you want to monitor.
4. Add recipient email addresses and choose your summary frequency:

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785491178071.png)
  1. **Weekly**: A summary of all data errors that occurred during that week.
  2. **Daily**: A summary of errors from that day.

#### Mark Data Points as Critical & Severity Levels

Not all errors carry the same weight. You can now mark specific data points as critical and adjust the severity level of an error. A new default sort surfaces the most severe issues first, so your team can focus on what matters most.

To assign a severity level to your user data:

1. Go to **Rule Settings** and click **Severity Configuration**.
2. Select the data points whose severity you want to change.

> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** Severity cannot be changed for identifiers.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785491710434.png)

> [!NOTE]
> Best practice:
> 
> Set high severity for your most important data, key events, identifiers, and data you frequently use in campaigns, so critical issues are never buried.

#### Ignore & Restore Errors

If a "detected error" is actually data you're sending intentionally, you can ignore it so it stops cluttering your main view. Ignored errors move to a separate Ignored tab and can be restored at any time; nothing is deleted or permanently hidden.

> [!WARNING]
> Once you ignore an error, that data point won't be checked again until you restore it. For example, if you ignore an invalid phone number format error, phone number data won't be checked for that error type until you restore it, but other error types (e.g., incorrect data type, null value, etc) will continue to be checked as usual.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785493585630.png)

To ignore an error:

1. Click the **Action** button on the error card.
2. Select **Ignore Error** from the menu. The card will move to the **Ignored Errors** tab.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785493714350.png)

To restore an error:

1. Go to the **Ignored Errors** tab.
2. Click **Restore Error** on the card you want to bring back.

> [!NOTE]
> You can only ignore **system-defined rules**. Four error types that are automatically defined by Insider One and set the trigger for error alerts.
> 
> - **Invalid Data Format Rule**: Trigger an error if any user data is received with an invalid data format from any source in the last 3 days.
> - **Incorrect Data Type Rule**: Trigger an error if any user data is received with an incorrect data type from any source in the last 3 days.
> - **Null Value Rule**: Trigger an error if any user data is received with a null value from any source in the last 3 days.
> - **Missing Required Parameter Rule**: Trigger an error if any user event received with a missing required user event parameter from any source in the last 3 days.

#### Errors Grouped by Associated Event

Errors tied to the same event are now grouped and shown together instead of appearing as separate, scattered cards, making it easier to see the full picture for a given event at a glance.

To view grouped errors:

1. Go to the **Active Error**s tab.
2. Click the **View Errors By** dropdown and select **Error Groups (Event-Based)**.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/c6df4583-da94-4cb2-bb8a-be0cbdd11109/Images/Documentation/image-1785493945141.png)

## What are the benefits of Data Validation?

Implementing the data validation system brings significant advantages directly to customers:

- **More successful campaigns:** Finding and fixing data errors early helps campaigns run correctly and perform better. This means better results for your marketing efforts and less wasted money.
- **Faster and easier problem solving:** Instead of spending hours manually searching for data mistakes, you'll get automatic alerts and clear guidance on how to fix issues. This saves valuable time for your teams.
- **Prevention of campaign issues:** You'll be notified of critical data problems as soon as they occur, allowing you to fix them before they cause campaigns to fail or underperform. Pre-campaign checks also ensure your data is ready to go.
- **Smoother****, faster onboarding:** Setting up your data with Insider is much easier, as the system helps quickly identify and resolve any integration issues.
- **Increased confidence in your data:** You can trust that the data used to personalize messages and segment users is accurate and reliable, leading to more effective strategies.
- **Better team alignment:** Both your marketing and technical teams will have a clear, shared view of data health, making it simpler to work together and ensure everything is set up correctly.

The data validation system provides immediate alerts and validation directly within the platform, reducing your reliance on other tools and helping you ensure data quality before problems arise.