Creating web data lookups
Data lookups allow you to retrieve contact, visitor, or custom object data. Implementing a data lookup on your website allows you to personalize web pages with contact or visitor information.
Using web data look ups, you can do the following:
- Display different web pages based on visitor profile data
- Display a specific web page to contacts belonging to an email group
- Allow entry to a portion of your site to known contacts
- Pre-populate a form
You can use a web data lookup to retrieve the following type of information:
- Contact fields
- Visitor profile fields
- A count of custom data records for a given custom object
- Custom data record fields
- Email group membership
Note: Contact data is limited to those contact fields enabled for web data lookups.
To create a web data lookup:
- Navigate to Assets
> Website Setup and then select Web Data Lookup. - Click Data Lookup > New Data Lookup.
- Give the data lookup a name.
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Choose the type of data lookup that you want to create. You can choose from:
- Contacts:
Important: As of release 23C, existing restricted or newly created web data lookups do not have the option to uncheck the Restricted checkbox.
-
Visitors:
- Custom Object Records: Used to return custom data record. Custom data records are retrieved based on the field you specify to match the contact on.
- Custom Objects: Used to return the number of custom data records in a given custom object. Custom objects are retrieved using the custom object ID.
-
Contact Group Memberships: Used to return a contact's email group membership. Group membership data is retrieved based on the contact field you specify to match the contact on.
Warning: Visitor data lookups cannot be limited to Show to Trusted Visitors Only. Contact data lookups are recommended for sensitive information. Learn more about Web Personalization Security.
- Contacts:
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Choose an option for the data fields that should be returned:
- If you are creating a contact and visitor data lookups, choose the view from the Data Fields Returned drop-down list. The data lookup only returns fields that are in the view.
- If you are creating a custom object lookups, choose the custom object. This determines which custom object to use in the web data lookup.
Important:The Restricted option is a legacy feature not available to all clients. If this box is not checked, Web Personalization Settings will not be respected and data will be displayed to all visitors. Learn more about Web Personalization Security.
- If applicable, choose the field that you want to use to identify the contact in the Edit Lookup Criteria area. For example, contact email address. Contacts are matched to an Oracle Eloqua contact record based on this field.
After you save the data lookup, you can add match criteria. This can help ensure that correct contact record is returned by the data lookup.
To avoid data discrepancies, set the Web Personalization Security setting to Show to All Known Visitors.
- Save the web data lookup.
After you save the data lookup, Oracle Eloqua generates a unique key for the lookup. You need this key to implement to the data lookup on your website.
Data lookup sample code
After you save the data lookup, Oracle Eloqua generates JavaScript sample code that you can use to implement the data lookup on your website.
To view the sample code, click Data Lookup Options > Get Data Lookup Scripts.
The following sample code is provided:
- Sample display script: This sample shows you how to return the data from the data lookup. If you created a contact or visitor data lookup, this sample includes references to the fields returned by the lookup.
- Form auto-population script: This samples shows you to pre-populate an Oracle Eloqua from with data returned from the lookup. To use this, select the from and then click Generate Script for Form.
Tip: If you want to pre-populate an Oracle Eloqua form, it is recommend that you use field merges to populate the form field.
- Integration: This sample shows you how to call the data lookup from your web page.
When you implement the data lookup on your website, the web page must also have the Oracle Eloqua tracking scripts implemented. Learn more about using a data lookup on a web page or data lookup examples.