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Event Controls

Although all data collected by Pendo is designed to provide value to customers, we offer controls to limit or completely prevent event collection based on your preferences or requirements. The current options are analytics.excludeEvents, excludeNonGuideAnalytics, choosing not to initialize the Pendo agent at all, and controlling text collection using excludeAllText or allowedText.

Detailed information about these options is available in our Analytics agent documentation. Below, you’ll find common scenarios explaining how and when to apply these configurations:

Exclude specific browser or analytic events​

If you need to prevent the capture of specific events, perhaps to avoid capturing synthetic events created by your application or to improve data accuracy, you can use the analytics.excludeEvents option.

For example, to exclude focus and submit events:

pendo.initialize({
...
  analytics:
    excludeEvents: ['focus', 'submit']
...
});

Prevent capturing all browser or analytic events​

To entirely turn off automatic collection of browser events while still allowing visitor metadata and guide data to be sent (which helps with segment creation), use the analytics.excludeEvents configuration to exclude all primary event types explicitly:

pendo.initialize({
...
  analytics:
    excludeEvents: ['load', 'click', 'focus', 'submit', 'change', 'track']
...
});

Capture only guide and poll events​

If guides and polls are considered essential, but other product analytics are optional, use the excludeNonGuideAnalytics option. This configuration prevents collection of all events except those directly related to guides and polls.

Note: With excludeNonGuideAnalytics turned on, visitor metadata and identity information won't appear in the UI when creating segments but will still be available for segmentation. Individual visitor information will remain visible in guide metrics for any guides the visitor interacts with.

Turn off all tracking and event capture​

In cases where privacy controls, automated users, or strict data-collection limits apply, the most effective choice is to not initialize the Pendo agent. This ensures no data collection occurs at all.