Data types

Important: The description of the data types in this topic are superseded by description of Data types in Program field editor.

A field Data type is determined by the Content Kind property in its Alternative set. Among the different Content kind options, Enumerated, Auto-indexed, and Integer are ones of the most commonly used, which can lead to confusion on which one is the most suitable to best fit your needs.

This decision tree presents the following case:

Enumerated — The company has a Loyalty tier system with Gold, Silver, and Bronze levels. They want to analyze customer satisfaction by tier. The tiers are stable over time and consistently populated.
Auto-indexed — Company has 400 unique products. The names of the products are consistently populated, but the products are reviewed and updated on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Integer — Company wants to calculate an average purchase amount per customer or a set of customers for financial linkage.

Selecting a suitable field data type.

See the following sections for details about different capabilities and associated field data types:

Reports
Survey configuration
User permissions and data access
Other configurations
Appendix

Reports

The following table shows the most suitable data type when working with reports.


Capability	Text	Auto-Indexed	Enumerated	Integer
Use as Customer Segment (see Appendix)	No	Yes	Yes	No
Custom Query	No	Yes	Yes	No
Use in Ranker (see Appendix)	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Use in Profiler (see Appendix)	No	No	Yes	No
Use in Columns (see Appendix)	No	No	Yes	No
Translatable	No	No	Yes	No
Use to customize reports	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Use in search box (see Appendix)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Survey configuration

The following table shows the most suitable data type when working with surveys.


Capability	Text	Auto-indexed	Enumerated	Integer
Used in survey conditions	No	No	Yes	No
Used to pipe-in to survey/email	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Translatable?	No	No	Yes	No

Role permissions and data access

The following table shows the most suitable data type when working with role permissions.


Capability	Text	Auto-indexed	Enumerated	Integer
Use to grant permissions	No	Yes*	Yes	No

*As the values in an auto-indexed field can change at any time, basing permissions on such fields is risky and not recommended.

Other configurations

The following table shows the most suitable data type for ongoing servicing.


Capability	Text	Auto-indexed	Enumerated	Integer
Limit on maximum number of values	No	Yes*	Yes	No
Data validation in file processing	No	No	Yes	No
Ease of maintenance if values are unstable and change	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Ease of historical data updates if values change	No	No	Yes	No
Use in Alerts conditions	No	No	Yes	No

* By default, the maximum number of values is 600,000. Indexed text fields can be configured using Medallia Setup to support a maximum of 2,000,000 values with the High cardinality for auto indexed... property.

Appendix

Customer segment filters

Customer Segment filters can be used for filtering on customer feedback.

Customer segment filters.

Profiler/Columns

The Profiler report displays customer segment counts and percentages in a tabular format. The default view shows segments over time, but you can change the columns of the table using the Columns dropdown.

Profiler table.

Ranker

A Ranker report ranks the performance of units in a company's organizational structure or selected fields.

Ranker report.

Search functionality

The search functionality allows you to search for surveys that contain specified terms (e.g., customer name, phone number, or any other searchable field).

Search functionality.