hi all, i was wondering if it possible to use a dataset that does not have a userid available as source for growthbook? we run experiments in a platform but have no way of exporting a user/browser id at the moment. so i was wondering if it makes sense to try and ingest the dataset without a userid.

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Hi Tim - are you looking to analyze previously ran experiments, or run and analyze new experiments? GrowthBook's bucketing and analysis require a unique visitor id. It doesn't have to be

userId

specifically, it can be anything so long as it's persistent across sessions and unique to the user. We need this persistent, unique ID for two reasons. 1. Our bucketing service hashes together this id, with the experiment trackingKey, so we know which variation this user should get. 2. When analyzing the experiment, we need to know which user saw which variation. If your data set does have some sort of uniquely identifying

id

you can use GrowthBook - all of the queries used to power the analysis are configurable, so you can replace the

userId

value with the value you have.

Hi @billions-xylophone-11752 thanks for your response! Yes correct, we created an ab-test setup prior to us knowing about growthbook. We have been manually processing the data in order to make conclusions for now. I'd look to first onboard growthbook as analysis platform, and then later on also use it as feature flag system. It seems that, most likely due to GDPR reasons, I am not able to export such data fields that hold unique visitor id. Based on your response, my conclusion is that I will need some sort of visitor id annyway. So I will need to keep looking for a way to retrieve such data point from the platform. if there is any other way don't hesitate to let me know! i really want to start using the platform :D

Hi Tim, Michael's advice is spot-on. I wanted to add that we have many customers based in the EU who use GrowthBook, so there must be a way that they are able to store a unique ID without violating the terms of the GDPR. Have you searched online for a solution? A quick search led me to this: https://law.stackexchange.com/a/86572