A database is a starting point to use multiple features of Acoustic Campaign suite. It's basically a set of contact information segmented into the groups (fields) of your choice. There are two types of databases in Acoustic: flexible and restricted.

Create a database

1. Name your database and designate a type. Go to Data > Databases and click Create in the dashboard you'll see.
2. Select the database type. Options are Double Opt-in, Single opt-in, Test List, Seed List, or Suppression List. Double opt-in databases require an email confirmation. Not all organizations are set up to allow double opt-in databases. If you have questions about your organization set-up, contact your organization administrator. If your database is a seed list, you cannot add fields to the database. Suppression lists require that the email field is the unique identifier (UID).
3. Type a name for your database in the Database or List Name field.
4. Select a folder where you would like to save your database: Private or Shared.
5. Choose whether to create a Flexible database or Restricted database.
   • Flexible database is required for SMS, mobile app messages, CRM, and strongly recommended for Acoustic Exchange customers. Select your database field(s) that you want to sync when adding or updating contacts.
   • Restricted database requires that you select at least one field as a unique identifier for your contacts. Typically, the unique identifier is email, but can be other fields. The field or fields that you select as your unique identifier are required when adding or updating contacts. 

     If you plan to use a relational table, you need to first create a database and then associate the table with the database. You can associate relational tables with multiple databases.

6. Click Next to display the Create Database/List Add Fields page.

Note: Be careful when naming fields because if you choose to merge databases, the field names in both databases must be the same.

• You can add fields to your database at any time. You can rename fields, but this can cause problems.
• You cannot change unique identifier after you create the database.
• For SMS and mobile push notification, you can only use one flexible database. This means no fields in your database, such as email, can have a unique identifier (UID) attached to it.

Create your database fields

1. Type a name in the Field Name field. Field names are required and cannot be changed after the database is saved. If you make a mistake, you must delete the field and create a new one.
2. Select a field type from the list. You can create up to 400 fields in any combination of field types.
3. Click Add Field. The new field appears in the list of fields. Edit or delete fields by clicking the Edit link next to the new field name. Add as many fields as you need.
4. If you've chosen a restricted database you need to choose your unique identifier (UID). The default for most Acoustic Campaign organizations is the email field. If you want to keep email as the UID for this database, continue to the next step. If you want to change the UID, click the Edit Unique Identifiers button.
   Important: Required for SMS, mobile app messages, CRM and strongly recommended for Acoustic Exchange customers. Select your database field(s) that you want to sync by when adding or updating contacts.
5. Choose the unique identifier that is needed by selecting the check boxes next to the fields that you want to use. You can choose up to 10 unique identifiers.
6. Click Save when you are finished.
7. Click Create to continue.

Database limitations

• Each database is limited to a total of 400 columns of any type, except segmenting fields.
• Segmenting fields are limited to a total of 12 segmenting fields per database.
• Text fields have a maximum character length of 4,000 characters with 255 being the max when using default values.
• Numeric fields have a 255 maximum character length.
• All pods support UTF-8 for database data.