Introduction to Totango Data Terminology

If any of the concepts within this article need further clarification please reach out to our support team at support@totango.com and we will incorporate your question into this article either via direct edit or in an FAQ.

Check out our video series which will guide you through the data structures with examples.

Data Types

Accounts

• Because Totango is schema-less every record in Totango is the same object type, an Account.
• Totango does allow you to have different objects, but this is done by way of an identifier that can be changed at any time, so a record in Totango can transition from one type to another without any need for data extraction/load.

Users

• A user is sub-record of an Account. 
• A user cannot exist in Totango without an association to an Account.
• Users have three states of elevation: User, Contact, Key Contact.
  • In order to be a Contact, they have to be a User, and in order to be a Key Contact, they must be a Contact. 
• Often customers ask "I only have contacts. They are not users, how do I account for this?"  A user in this context does not mean they are a user of your platform.  This is a data type for the record in Totango, and thus should be brought into Totango as Users and elevated to Contact.  
  
  

Collection

• A collection is a list of data related to an Account. 
• A collection cannot exist in Totango without an association to an Account. 
  • Some examples of collections are lists of Support Tickets, Opportunities or NPS responses. 
• You can have as many collections as you want in Totango.  There are two types of collections virtual and standard. 
  • Standard Collection:
    • A standard collection is one where you will load all the data into Totango either via API or CSV. 
    • A standard collection can be updated in real-time using API, or as quickly as every 15 minutes using CSV or Data Warehouse or CRM.  
  • Virtual Collection:
    • A virtual collection is a direct query to the data source where this list exists and is fetched live when the user loads the account record in Totango. 
    • A virtual collection cannot be queried within segmentation, so if you plan to take action on a collection you must use standard.
    • If your goal is real-time information at hand then use a virtual collection. 

Identifier Requirements

Account: Every record that gets brought into Totango needs to have a globally unique Account ID associated with it. This ID should not have special characters within it. _ and - are supported.

User: Every user record must include a UserID and an AccountID.  The same user ID can exist across multiple Accounts.  Generally, customers use the user's email address as the user ID.

Collection: Every collection record must include a CollectionID and an AccountID.  The same collection ID can exist across multiple Accounts. 

Continue to our video on Getting Started: An Introduction to Totango Data & Structure!