What is data anonymisation?
Data anonymisation in Waitwhile is a privacy feature that protects sensitive customer information by removing or obfuscating personal data.
It helps businesses comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR by making customer data untraceable to individuals when it is no longer needed. At the same time, non-identifiable data is preserved for reporting and analytics.
How to configure data anonymisation
Follow these steps to enable and customise Data anonymisation in Waitwhile:
Navigate to settings
Go to Account Settings from your Waitwhile dashboard by clicking the Avatar in the lower left corner, select Account overview, navigate to Account settings
Select privacy settings
Under the Security section, look for Anonymise customer history
Enable anonymisation & set the method
Select enable anonymisation to turn on the feature
Choose the method for anonymising the customer data. You can either mask the data or delete the data.
Set the retention period
Choose how long customer data will remain identifiable (e.g., 30, 60, or 90 days). After the retention period, the data will automatically be anonymized.
Save changes
Click Save to apply your settings.
Choose the data to anonymize
When anonymisation is enabled, default customer fields are identified as sensitive and automatically anonymised (Name, Phone, Email, and Notes). You also have the ability to select other fields as sensitive and add them to the anonymisation list.
Go to Settings > Customer details
Edit the custom field you want to mark as sensitive
Check the box indicating This field contains sensitive information
Click Update to save your changes
Remember: Certain fields cannot be anonymised. These include: Party size, Customer ID, Services, Resources, Selection, Checkbox, and Policy type input fields.
Examples of anonymised data
When masking data, Waitwhile replaces parts of the personal info with asterisks (*). Here are a few examples of how fields look before and after anonymization:
1. Name
Sandy Smith = S**y S**h
John Smith = J**n S**h
2. Phone number
+12345 = +1234**45
+4671234 = +4671**34
3. Email address
b@g.com = b**@g**.com
ben@gmail.com = b**@g**.com
Audit log data masking
To further protect customer data, personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, notes, and any custom fields marked as sensitive may also be masked in audit log entries and the Audit Entries API.
This masking is applied when audit entries are created and follows the same anonymisation settings configured for your account.
Note: Customer exports, visit exports, and other APIs are not affected by this change. Audit logs are intended for troubleshooting and auditing purposes, not as a source of customer data.
Important Notes
Once data is anonymised, it cannot be recovered, so be sure to set the appropriate retention period to meet your business and regulatory needs.
Non-identifiable data will still be available for reporting purposes, helping you analyse trends without compromising customer privacy.
Ability to enable anonymisation is only available on the Enterprise plan. Read more about our different plans on our Pricing page.
By enabling Data Anonymisation, you ensure your business is aligned with best practices for data privacy while maintaining access to useful insights.
Have additional questions or need assistance? Reach out to us via chat or at support@waitwhile.com