email-contacts

Archive a contact property

Archiving is how you remove a contact property. Bird keeps its values so you can restore it with Unarchive.

The property disappears from property pickers, including import column mapping. New template versions that read it cannot be published. The publish error names the property. Templates already published keep sending and fill in its value. You can still read and update the property's values through the API and imports. Values must match the property's type. See Archiving a property for more details.

Archiving returns a 409 conflict while a published automation, including a paused one, uses the property in a trigger or contact write. An active run that writes the property also blocks archiving. Remove the property from those automations or archive them. Let active runs finish or cancel them, then archive the property again. If you have permission to read automations, the error names up to five that use the property.

The key stays reserved and counts toward the workspace's 200-property limit. Archiving an already archived property also returns a 409 conflict. Use Unarchive a contact property to restore it.

post/v1/contact-properties/{property_id}/archive

Request

  • Base URL: https://us1.platform.bird.com
  • URL: https://us1.platform.bird.com/v1/contact-properties/{property_id}/archive
  • Auth: one of:
    • HTTP bearer
    • API key in cookie bird_session

Path parameters

property_idstring required
Example:prp_01krdgeqcxet5s7t44vh8rt9mg

ID of the contact property to archive.

Headers

Idempotency-Keystring

Client-supplied key. On operations supporting request deduplication, a retained response is replayed for duplicate requests with the same key within the idempotency window (3 hours by default). This protection requires a workspace, organization, or staff-account scope. User-only and unscoped unauthenticated operations, streams, and operations with a separate replay contract do not use this response replay.

On a supported operation, if idempotency protection is unavailable before execution, the API returns 503 IdempotencyUnavailable (E01033) without executing this attempt. Retry with backoff using the same key and request. An operation that takes effect before its response is retained can still execute again on retry.

Two distinct 409 errors signal misuse:

  • request_in_progress (E01004): The same key is currently being processed by a concurrent request. Wait briefly and retry. The lock expires within 30 seconds.
  • idempotency_key_reuse (E01005): The same key has already completed against a different request body or method. Generate a new key.

Recommended key format is <event-type>/<entity-id> (for example welcome-user/usr_abc123).

X-Workspace-Idstring

Workspace context for the request. Required for dashboard authentication and master keys. Workspace keys and access tokens already identify their workspace; send that workspace or omit the header. A different one is rejected.

X-Organization-Idstring

Organization context for the request. Required for dashboard authentication. An API key or access token carries its own organization, so send either that organization or no header at all; a different one is rejected.

Response

The archived contact property.

idstring required
keystring required

The property key, used as the key in contact data and as the attribute in the bird.contact.<key> broadcast template variable. Lowercase letters, digits, and underscores, starting with a letter. Cannot be changed after creation.

type'string' | 'number' | 'boolean' | 'datetime' required

The value type every contact must use for a property. Cannot be changed after creation.

datetime values are RFC 3339 timestamps with an explicit offset. Examples include 2024-01-15T09:30:00Z and 2024-01-15T11:30:00+02:00. A bare date or a time with no offset is rejected. The value is normalized to UTC with second precision on write, so 2024-01-15T11:30:00+02:00 is stored and returned as 2024-01-15T09:30:00Z, and any fractional seconds are dropped.

fallback_valueunknown
archivedboolean

Whether the property is archived. Archived properties disappear from pickers and cannot be used in new template versions. Published templates keep sending. Stored values remain available to read and update. Unarchive the property to restore it.

created_atstring date-time required
updated_atstring date-time required

Example response

{
  "id": "prp_01krdgeqcxet5s7t44vh8rt9mg",
  "key": "plan",
  "created_at": "2026-05-20T09:14:52Z",
  "updated_at": "2026-05-25T16:42:01Z"
}

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 2 revisions of this API.