[Content]:

[lizkane222]

What article on segment.com/docs is affected?

https://segment.com/docs/personas/identity-resolution/externalids/#custom-externalids

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

https://segment.com/docs/personas/identity-resolution/externalids/#custom-externalids

This section is currently a bit confusing, and doesn't actually require customers to send identifiers via the context.externalIds array only. Potentially consider adding the sections below :

All three of these events do the same thing on the profile in Personas. As long as phone has already been configured as a custom external_id in your Space's Identity Resolution rules, then you can include it via the context.externalIds array, via the properties object, or via the context.traits object.
The example given has phone passed via the context.externalIds array :

analytics.track('Subscription Upgraded', {
   plan: 'Pro',
   mrr: 99.99
}, {
  externalIds: [
    {
      id: '123-456-7890',
      type: 'phone',
      collection: 'users',
      encoding: 'none'
    }
  ]
})

The regular way of adding phone as a property will get picked up by Personas and applied as an external_id/identifier :
analytics.track('Subscription Upgraded', { plan: 'Pro', mrr: 99.99, phone: '123-456-7777'})

You can also include phone like this via the [context.traits](https://segment.com/docs/connections/sources/catalog/libraries/website/javascript/identity/#saving-traits-to-the-context-object) object and it'll be added to the profile as an external_id/identifier :
analytics.track('Subscription Upgraded', {plan: 'Pro', mrr: 99.99}, {traits : {phone_number: '123-456-8888'}})

Additional information

Feel free to reach out to me at lkane@twilio.com or lkane on Twilio's Slack (for some reason this is linked to my personal GH account).

Feel free to reference this Zendesk ticket where this came up.

[rchinn1]

Hey @lizkane222, I’ve updated the custom externalIDs section and will include it in our next docs deploy (9/8). Here’s the preview, let me know if there are any other changes you’d like to see. Thanks!