Glossary

Key terms and concepts used in Zeotap and the CDP domain, sorted alphabetically.

A/B Test — A division of an audience into random percentage-based groups for experimentation. Uses deterministic hashing for consistent assignment — the same customer always falls into the same A/B test group, ensuring stable test populations across evaluations.

Access Policy — A row-level access control policy applied to groups. When an access policy is active for a group, all queries by group members are automatically scoped to matching rows only. Used for team-based data isolation (e.g., regional teams see only their region’s data).

Activation — The process of sending audience data or customer attributes from your warehouse to a destination platform for marketing, advertising, analytics, or operational use. Activation is the output stage of the CDP pipeline.

API Key — A secret token used for programmatic access to the Zeotap REST API and MCP server. API keys are workspace-scoped, hashed with bcrypt at rest, and support rotation and expiration.

Audience — A defined segment of customers based on computed attribute conditions and attribute filters. Audiences are created under Activation using the filter builder or NL Audience Builder, and activated via syncs to destinations.

Branch — An orchestration tile that splits the customer flow into two or more paths based on conditions. Branch types include computed attribute conditions, event checks, percentage splits, and time-based conditions.

CDP — Customer Data Platform. A system that unifies customer data from multiple sources, builds a single view of the customer, and enables activation to marketing, sales, and analytics tools. Zeotap is a composable, warehouse-native CDP.

Computed Attribute — A derived metric about a customer entity, evaluated as SQL against your warehouse. Three types: SQL computed attributes (custom SQL queries), aggregation computed attributes (count, sum, average, min, max over a related table), and formula computed attributes (combine existing computed attributes with expressions). Computed attributes are the building blocks for audience conditions.

Connected Components — The graph algorithm used in identity resolution to group related customer records into unified profiles. Records sharing a common identifier (directly or transitively) are placed in the same component, forming a cluster that becomes a golden record.

Consent Category — A classification (e.g., analytics, marketing, advertising, functional) used in event consent management to control which events are forwarded to which destinations based on the user’s consent state.

Contract — See Event Contract.

Destination — An external tool or platform where Zeotap sends data. Destinations span CRM, advertising, marketing, analytics, warehouses, cloud storage, and streaming categories. Zeotap supports 50+ destinations.

Destination Policy — A governance policy that controls which data can flow to specific destinations. Policies can block certain audiences from syncing to a destination, enforce field restrictions, or apply rate limits to protect destination APIs.

Entity Type — A core object in your data model representing a business entity (e.g., User, Account, Product, Order). Entity types define the structure of your customer data model and are the foundation for computed attributes, audiences, and relationships.

Event — A timestamped action or occurrence sent to Zeotap via the events API. Events follow a Segment-compatible format with four types: track (actions), identify (user traits), page (page views), and group (group membership).

Event Contract — A schema definition that enforces required properties and data types on incoming events. When an event violates a contract, the configured violation policy determines whether to allow, drop the offending property, or reject the event entirely.

Event Forwarding — Real-time routing of events from Zeotap to downstream analytics and marketing tools. Forwarding rules define which events go to which destinations, with optional property mapping and consent filtering.

Event Source — A secret token used to authenticate event sources when sending data to the Zeotap events API. Each event source is associated with a named source (e.g., “Production Web App”) for tracking and independent revocation.

Field Mapping — The configuration that maps columns from a Zeotap model or audience to fields in a destination. Field mapping defines how source data translates to the destination’s schema, including type conversions and field renaming.

Filter Builder — The visual interface in Activation for defining audience conditions using AND/OR logic, comparison operators (equals, greater than, contains, is null, etc.), and nested groups. Supports computed attribute values, entity attributes, and cross-entity conditions via relationships.

Formula Computed Attribute — A computed attribute that combines existing computed attributes using arithmetic or logical expressions. Formula computed attributes reference other computed attributes by name and support operations like lifetime_value / total_orders or days_since_last_order > 60.

Golden Record — The unified customer profile output from identity resolution, containing the best-known values for each attribute across all matched source records. Survivorship rules determine which source value wins when multiple records contribute the same attribute.

Governance — The set of features controlling access, data flow, and compliance: RBAC (who can do what), destination policies (where data can flow), access policies (which data is visible), organizations (multi-workspace management), and AI guardrails (safety boundaries for AI operations).

Group — A collection of workspace members used for easier RBAC and access policy management. Members inherit group-level permissions and data access restrictions, simplifying team-based access control.

Identifier Family — A category of customer identifier used in identity resolution (e.g., email, phone, device_id, customer_id). Each family can have variants (e.g., personal email, work email) and configurable matching rules.

Identity Graph — A configuration that defines how customer records are linked across data sources during identity resolution. Contains identifier families, merge rules, limit rules, and survivorship rules that control the unification algorithm.

Identity Resolution — The process of unifying customer records from multiple data sources into a single golden record using shared identifiers and a connected-components algorithm. Runs as SQL in your warehouse, supporting both full and incremental resolution modes.

Incremental Resolution — An identity resolution mode that only processes new or changed records since the last run, rather than recomputing the entire identity graph from scratch. Significantly faster for ongoing resolution after the initial full run.

Orchestration — A multi-step, multi-channel workflow that customers move through based on triggers, conditions, and time delays. Built using a visual canvas editor with tiles for entry, wait, branch, action, and exit. Orchestrations automate customer experiences across destinations.

Limit Rule — A constraint in identity resolution that prevents super-clusters (unreasonably large merged profiles) by capping the maximum cluster size or the number of identifiers per family within a single cluster.

Loader — A connector that pulls data from SaaS applications (Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Zendesk, etc.) into your data warehouse on a configurable schedule, making external application data available for modeling and audience building.

MCP Server — Model Context Protocol server that exposes Zeotap’s capabilities as AI-callable tools. Enables integration with Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible client. Supports schema introspection, audience operations, sync management, and write operations with guardrail enforcement.

Merge Rule — A rule in identity resolution that defines which identifier matches can merge two records together. Merge rules support deterministic matching (exact value match on a specified identifier family) and can be configured to require matching on multiple identifier families.

Mirror Mode — A sync mode that keeps the destination in perfect sync with the source — creating new records, updating changed records, and deleting records that no longer exist in the source. The recommended mode for most syncs where the destination should always reflect current audience membership.

Model — A SQL query that defines a view of data from a connected source. Models shape raw warehouse tables into the format needed for syncing, computed attribute evaluation, audience building, and relationship mapping. Models are the bridge between raw data and Zeotap features.

Organization — A multi-workspace container for centralized billing, member management, and SSO configuration. Organizations allow companies to manage multiple workspaces (e.g., production, staging, different business units) under a single administrative umbrella.

Permission — A fine-grained access right in the RBAC system. Zeotap has 42 permissions across 14 resource categories (sources, models, audiences, syncs, destinations, computed attributes, orchestrations, events, governance, settings, and more). Permissions are grouped into roles.

Priority — An ordered list of audiences used to resolve membership overlap. When a customer qualifies for multiple audiences in a priority, they are assigned to the highest-priority audience only. Useful for tiered marketing programs and mutually exclusive segmentation.

Profile Explorer — A UI for searching and viewing unified customer profiles from identity resolution. Search by any identifier (email, phone, customer ID) to see the golden record, linked source records, merge history, computed attribute values, and audience memberships.

RBAC — Role-Based Access Control. A permission model based on built-in roles (Owner, Admin, Member) with additive permissions. RBAC controls who can view, create, edit, and delete resources across the platform. Applied at the workspace level.

Relationship — A defined connection between two entity types (e.g., User belongs_to Account, User purchased Product). Relationships enable cross-entity audience building (e.g., “Users whose Account has over 100 employees”) and cross-entity computed attribute evaluation.

Relationships — The structural definition of your customer data, including entity types, their attributes (identifiers and properties), and relationships between entity types. The Relationships module gives Zeotap a unified understanding of your data model across all connected sources.

Reverse ETL Sync — A connection between a model and a destination that defines field mapping, sync mode, schedule, and error handling. Reverse ETL syncs move data from your warehouse to external tools on a configured cadence.

Role — A named set of permissions assigned to workspace members. Built-in roles include Owner (full access), Admin (manage resources and members), and Member (operational access). Roles determine the scope of what each user can see and do.

Sync (Activation) — A connection that sends audience membership and mapped fields to a destination. Supports three modes: mirror (full sync with adds, updates, and removes), additive (only adds new members), and subtractive (only removes exited members).

Sync Mode — The strategy for how data is written to a destination: upsert (create or update based on a matching identifier), mirror (full sync with creates, updates, and deletes), append (add only, no deduplication), or insert (create only, fail on duplicates).

Sync Run — A single execution of a sync. Each run produces metrics including rows synced (added, updated, removed), errors encountered, duration, throughput (rows/second), and completion status. Sync runs are logged in the audit trail and visible in the Insights dashboards.

Tile — A building block in the orchestration canvas. Tile types include: entry (defines who enters), wait (pause for a duration), branch (split based on conditions), action (send a message or trigger an API call), update profile (modify a computed attribute or attribute), webhook (call an external URL), sub-orchestration (nest another orchestration), and exit (end the orchestration).

Transformation — A processing step applied to events between receipt and forwarding. Transformations can rename properties, add computed properties, remove sensitive fields, filter events, or modify values before the event reaches its destination.

Upsert — A sync mode that creates new records when the matching identifier doesn’t exist in the destination, and updates existing records when it does. Does not delete records that are removed from the source. The most common sync mode for model-to-destination syncs.

Variant — A sub-type within an identifier family in identity resolution. For example, the “email” family might have “personal” and “work” variants. Variants allow more granular control over which identifier matches can trigger a merge.

Warehouse — A connection to a data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks). Warehouses are read-only connections from which models query data. Zeotap executes SQL against warehouses but does not write to warehouse tables (except for its own operational schemas).

Warehouse-Native — Zeotap’s core architecture principle where all computation (computed attribute evaluation, audience building, identity resolution, model execution) runs as SQL queries directly in the customer’s data warehouse. Customer data never leaves the warehouse except during activation to destinations.

Workspace — The top-level organizational unit in Zeotap. A workspace contains all resources (sources, models, destinations, syncs, audiences, computed attributes, orchestrations, events, governance policies) and manages member access via RBAC. Each workspace connects to one primary data warehouse.