Sometimes, Amplitude might receive data from your app that it doesn't know what to do with. This is usually the result of a Schema violation, and it means the data Amplitude has just received is not accounted for in your Schema. This is usually the result of failing to plan for that particular data type or value when you first set up your Schema.
You can tell Amplitude how to handle these situations by configuring your Schema settings. Currently, you can configure for three different types of Schema violations. Find your Schema settings by clicking and navigating to Govern > Advanced > Schema Settings.
NOTE: This feature is only available for organizations who have purchased the Govern Add-on (formerly known as Taxonomy).
Unplanned event types
Sometimes, Amplitude may receive an event that is not part of your Schema, or that you did not previously plan. This is an unplanned event type. You can configure Amplitude to respond to these in any of the following ways:
- Accept the event and its properties and automatically add it your Schema. No warnings or violations will be triggered. All events, properties and values will be collected with this setting.
- Trigger a warning and hide the event. Amplitude will set the event's status as unexpected. You can then choose to approve the event and add it to your Schema, or reject it and prevent Amplitude from collecting it in the future.
- Reject the event and trigger a warning. Amplitude will not ingest the event. Any event data that is not ingested is not available in the future.
Unplanned event/user properties
When Amplitude encounters an event or user property that is not part of your Schema, or that you did not previously plan, it considers the property to be an unplanned event/user property. You can configure Amplitude to respond to these in any of the following ways:
- Accept the property and automatically add it your Schema. No warnings or violations will be triggered. All events, properties and values will be collected with this setting.
- Trigger a warning. Amplitude will set the property's status to unexpected and flag it in the Schema. You can then choose to approve it and add it to your Schema, or reject it and prevent Amplitude from collecting it in the future.
- Reject the property and trigger a warning. Amplitude will ingest the event, but not the event property. Any event data that is not ingested is not available in the future.
Unplanned event/user property values
When Amplitude receives an event property value that is not part of your Schema, or that you did not previously plan, it considers the value an unplanned property value. For example, an event property value is sent as a string, but your Schema expected a number. You can configure Amplitude to respond to an unplanned property value in any of the following ways:
- Accept the property. No warnings or violations will be triggered.
- Trigger a warning. Amplitude will show a warning that an unexpected event property value was collected.
- Reject the property and trigger a warning. Amplitude will ingest the event, but not the event property. Any event data that is not ingested is not available in the future.
If Amplitude is rejecting your event data and you want to begin collecting it, add the events or properties to your Schema by planning a new event or planning a new property.
View validation errors
Once you have initialized your Schema and defined your expected events and event properties, your Schema can be used to validate live data coming into Amplitude. If your Schema is configured to Trigger a warning for unexpected events or properties, Amplitude will log an error in the validation errors panel.
View validation errors by clicking and navigating to Govern > Advanced > Validation Errors. Any errors that were triggered in the last 24 hours will be displayed on this page, regardless of if the event or property have since been approved or rejected. If no errors are shown in the validation page, then there has not been any violations in the past 24 hours. This does not mean that the violations have been fixed, only that they have not been seen in the past 24 hours.
You can set up email alerts for validation errors by clicking Subscribe.