Documentation Experience Platform Destinations Guide

Activate audiences to batch profile export destinations

Last update: April 2, 2025

Topics:
Destinations

CREATED FOR:

Admin
User

IMPORTANT

To activate audiences and enable the mapping step of the workflow, you need the View Destinations, Activate Destinations, View Profiles, and View Segments access control permissions.
To activate audiences without going through the mapping step of the workflow, you need the View Destinations, Activate Segment without Mapping, View Profiles, and View Segments access control permissions.
To export identities, you need the View Identity Graph access control permission.

Read the access control overview or contact your product administrator to obtain the required permissions.

Overview

This article explains the workflow required to activate audiences in Adobe Experience Platform to batch profile file-based destinations, such as cloud storage and email marketing destinations.

Prerequisites

To activate audiences to destinations, you must have successfully connected to a destination. If you haven’t done so already, go to the destinations catalog, browse the supported destinations, and configure the destination that you want to use.

Supported file formats for export

The following file formats are supported when exporting audiences:

CSV
JSON
Parquet

Note that exporting CSV files gives you greater flexibility in terms of how you want to structure your exported files. Read more about file formatting configuration for CSV files.

Select your desired file format for export when creating a connection to the file-based destination.

Select your destination

Go to Connections > Destinations, and select the Catalog tab.
Select Activate audiences on the card corresponding to the destination where you want to activate your audiences, as shown in the image below.
Select the destination connection that you want to use to activate your audiences, then select Next.
Move to the next section to select your audiences.

Select your audiences

To select the audiences that you want to activate to the destination, use the check boxes to the left of the audience names, then select Next.

You can select from multiple types of audiences, depending on their origin:

Segmentation Service: Audiences generated within Experience Platform by the Segmentation Service. See the segmentation documentation for more details.
Custom upload: Audiences generated outside of Experience Platform, and uploaded into Experience Platform as CSV files. To learn more about external audiences, see the documentation on importing an audience. Selecting audiences originating from Custom uploads automatically enables the Select enrichment attributes step.
Other types of audiences, originating from other Adobe solutions, such as Audience Manager.

IMPORTANT

When activating custom upload audiences to batch file-based destinations, there is a limit of 10 such audiences that you can activate in a dataflow.

Checkboxes shown when selecting one or multiple audiences to activate.

TIP

To remove audiences from existing activation flows, use the Activation data page. Read the section on how to remove multiple audiences from activation flows for details.

Schedule audience export

Adobe Experience Platform exports data for email marketing and cloud storage destinations as different file types. In the Scheduling page, you can configure the schedule and the file names for each audience you are exporting.

Experience Platform automatically sets a default schedule for each file export. You can modify the default schedule according to your needs, by selecting the pencil icon next to each schedule, and defining a custom schedule.

Edit schedule control highlighted in the Scheduling step.

To edit multiple schedules at the same time, select the audiences by using the check boxes on the left side of the screen, then select Edit schedule. The schedule you configure will then be applied to all the exported files for the selected audiences.

Image of the Experience Platform user interface showing the edit schedule option for multiple selected audiences.

TIP

You can edit audience activation schedules for existing activation flows from the Activation data page. See the documentation on bulk editing activation schedules for details.

IMPORTANT

Adobe Experience Platform automatically splits the export files at 5 million records (rows) per file. Each row represents one profile.

Split file names are appended with a number that indicates the file is part of a larger export, as such: filename.csv, filename_2.csv, filename_3.csv.

Export full files

Select Export full files to trigger the export of a file containing a full snapshot of all profile qualifications for the selected audience.

Export full files toggle selected.

Use the Frequency selector to select the export frequency:
- Once: schedule a one time on-demand full file export.
- Daily: schedule full file exports once a day, every day, at the time you specify.
Use the Time toggle to select whether the export should happen immediately after audience evaluation or on a scheduled basis, at a specified time. When selecting the Scheduled option, you can use the selector to choose the time of day, in UTC format, when the export should take place.

Use the After segment evaluation option to have the activation job run immediately after the daily Experience Platform batch segmentation job completes. This option ensures that when the activation job runs, the most up-to-date profiles are exported to your destination. This might result in an audience being exported multiple times a day, based on your actions.

IMPORTANT
If you run flexible audience evaluation on audiences which are already set to be activated after segment evaluation, the audiences will be activated as soon as the flexible audience evaluation job finishes, regardless of any previous daily activation jobs. This might result in audiences being exported multiple times a day, based on your actions.

Use the Scheduled option to have the activation job run at a fixed time. This option ensures that Experience Platform profile data is exported at the same time each day. However, the profiles you export may not be the most up to date, depending on whether the batch segmentation job has completed before the activation job kicks off.

IMPORTANT
When mapping an audience which was created within the last 24 hours and evaluated through batch segmentation, set your daily export schedule to start the following day at the earliest. This assures that the daily batch evaluation job runs first and you are exporting complete audience data.
Use the Date selector to choose the day or interval when the export should take place. For daily exports, best practice is to set your start and end date to line up with the duration of your campaigns in your downstream platforms.

IMPORTANT
When selecting an export interval, the last day of the interval is not included in the exports. For example, if you select an interval of January 4 - 11, the last file export will take place on January 10.
Select Create to save the schedule.

Export incremental files

Select Export incremental files to trigger an export where the first file is a full snapshot of all profile qualifications for the selected audience, and subsequent files are incremental profile qualifications since the previous export.

IMPORTANT

The first exported incremental file includes all profiles that qualify for an audience, functioning as a backfill.

Export incremental files toggle selected.

Use the Frequency selector to select the export frequency:
- Daily: schedule incremental file exports once a day, every day, at the time you specify.
- Hourly: schedule incremental file exports every 3, 6, 8, or 12 hours.
Use the Time selector to choose the time of day, in UTC format, when the export should take place.
Use the Date selector to choose the interval when the export should take place. Best practice is to set your start and end date to line up with the duration of your campaigns in your downstream platforms.

IMPORTANT
The last day of the interval is not included in the exports. For example, if you select an interval of January 4 - 11, the last file export will take place on January 10.
Select Create to save the schedule.

Configure file names

For most destinations, the default file names consist of destination name, audience ID, and a date and time indicator. For example, you can edit your exported file names to distinguish between different campaigns or to have the data export time appended to the files. Note that some destination developers might select to have different default file name append options shown for their destinations.

To open a modal window and edit the file names, select the pencil icon. File names are limited to 255 characters.

NOTE

The image below shows how file names can be edited for Amazon S3 destinations but the process is identical for all batch destinations (for example SFTP, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Storage).

Image highlighting the pencil icon, which is used to configure file names.

In the file name editor, you can select different components to add to the file name.

Image displaying all the available file name options.

The destination name and audience ID cannot be removed from file names. In addition to these options, you can add the following options:

File name option

Description

Audience name

The name of the exported audience.

Date and time

Select between adding a MMDDYYYY_HHMMSS format or a UNIX 10-digit timestamp of the time when the files are generated. Choose one of these options if you would like your files to have a dynamic file name generated with each incremental export.

Custom text

Any custom text that you want to add to the file names.

Destination ID

The ID of the destination dataflow you use to export the audience.

Destination name

The name of the destination dataflow you use to export the audience.

Organization name

Your organization name within Experience Platform.

Sandbox name

The ID of the sandbox you use to export the audience.

To edit multiple file names at the same time, select the audiences by using the check boxes on the left side of the screen, then select Edit file name. The file name options you configure will then be applied to all the exported files for the selected audiences.

Image of the Experience Platform user interface showing the edit file name option for multiple selected audiences.

Select Apply changes to confirm your selection.

IMPORTANT

If you don’t select the Date and Time component, the file names will be static and the new exported file will overwrite the previous file in your storage location with each export. When running a recurring import job from a storage location into an email marketing platform, this is the recommended option.

Once you have finished configuring all your audiences, select Next to continue.

Mapping

In this step, you must select the profile attributes that you want to add to the files exported to the target destination. To select profile attributes and identities for export:

In the Mapping page, select Add new mapping.
Select the arrow to the right of the Source field entry.
In the Select source field page, select the profile attributes and identities that you want to include in the exported files to the destination, then choose Select.

TIP
You can use the search field to narrow down your selection, as shown in the image below.

Use the Show only fields with data toggle to only display schema fields populated with values. By default, only populated schema fields are shown.
The field you selected for export now appears in the mapping view. If you wish, you can edit the name of the header in the exported file. To do this, select the icon on the target field.
In the Select target field page, type in the desired name of the header in your exported file, then choose Select.
The field you selected for export now appears in the mapping view and shows the edited header in the exported file.
(Optional) The order of the mapped fields in the UI reflects in the order of the columns in the exported CSV file, from top to bottom, with the top row being the leftmost column in the CSV file. You can reorder the mapped fields in any way you want, by dragging and dropping the mapping rows, as shown below.

NOTE
This feature is in beta and only available to select customers. To request access to this feature, contact your Adobe representative.
(Optional) You can select your exported field to be a mandatory key or a deduplication key.
To add more fields for exporting, repeat the steps above.

Mandatory attributes

A mandatory attribute is a user-enabled checkbox which ensures all profile records contain the selected attribute. For example: all exported profiles contain an email address.

You can mark attributes as mandatory to ensure that Experience Platform exports only the profiles that include the specific attribute. As a result, it can be used as an additional form of filtering. Marking an attribute as mandatory is not required.

Not selecting a mandatory attribute exports all qualified profiles regardless of their attributes.

It is recommended that one of the attributes is a unique identifier from your schema. For more information about mandatory attributes, see the identity section in the Email marketing destinations documentation.

Deduplication keys

A deduplication key is a user-defined primary key which determines the identity by which users want their profiles to be deduplicated.

Deduplication keys eliminate the possibility of having multiple records of the same profile in one export file.

There are three ways you can use deduplication keys in Experience Platform:

Using a single identity namespace as a deduplication key
Using a single profile attribute from an XDM profile as a deduplication key
Using a combination of two profile attributes from an XDM profile as a composite key

IMPORTANT

You can export a single identity namespace to a destination, and the namespace is automatically set as deduplication key. Sending multiple namespaces to a destination is not supported.

You cannot use a combination of identity namespaces and profile attributes as deduplication keys.

Deduplication example

This example illustrates how deduplication works, depending on the selected deduplication keys.

Let’s consider the following two profiles.

Profile A

{
  "identityMap": {
    "Email": [
      {
        "id": "johndoe_1@example.com"
      },
      {
        "id": "doejohn_1@example.com"
      }
    ]
  },
  "segmentMembership": {
    "ups": {
      "fa5c4622-6847-4199-8dd4-8b7c7c7ed1d6": {
        "status": "realized",
        "lastQualificationTime": "2021-03-10 10:03:08"
      }
    }
  },
  "person": {
    "name": {
      "lastName": "Doe",
      "firstName": "John"
    }
  },
  "personalEmail": {
    "address": "johndoe@example.com"
  }
}

Profile B

{
  "identityMap": {
    "Email": [
      {
        "id": "johndoe_2@example.com"
      },
      {
        "id": "doejohn_2@example.com"
      }
    ]
  },
  "segmentMembership": {
    "ups": {
      "fa5c4622-6847-4199-8dd4-8b7c7c7ed1d6": {
        "status": "realized",
        "lastQualificationTime": "2021-04-10 11:33:28"
      }
    }
  },
  "person": {
    "name": {
      "lastName": "D",
      "firstName": "John"
    }
  },
  "personalEmail": {
    "address": "johndoe@example.com"
  }
}

Deduplication use case 1: no deduplication

Using no deduplication, the export file would contain the following entries.

personalEmail

firstName

lastName

johndoe@example.com

John

Doe

johndoe@example.com

John

D

Deduplication use case 2: deduplication based on identity namespace

Assuming deduplication by the Email namespace, the export file would contain the following entries. Profile B is the latest one that qualified for the audience, so it is the only one getting exported.

Email*

personalEmail

firstName

lastName

johndoe_2@example.com

johndoe@example.com

John

D

doejohn_2@example.com

johndoe@example.com

John

D

Deduplication use case 3: deduplication based on a single profile attribute

Assuming deduplication by the personal Email attribute, the export file would contain the following entry. Profile B is the latest one that qualified for the audience, so it is the only one getting exported.

personalEmail*

firstName

lastName

johndoe@example.com

John

D

Deduplication use case 4: deduplication based on two profile attributes

Assuming deduplication by the composite key personalEmail + lastName, the export file would contain the following entries.

personalEmail*

lastName*

firstName

johndoe@example.com

D

John

johndoe@example.com

Doe

John

Adobe recommends selecting an identity namespace such as a CRM ID or email address as a deduplication key, to ensure all profile records are uniquely identified.

Deduplication behavior for profiles with the same timestamp

When exporting profiles to file-based destinations, deduplication ensures that only one profile is exported when multiple profiles share the same deduplication key and the same reference timestamp. This timestamp represents the moment a profile’s audience membership or identity graph was last updated. For more information on how profiles are updated and exported, see the profile export behavior document.

Key considerations

Deterministic selection: When multiple profiles have identical deduplication keys and the same reference timestamp, the deduplication logic determines which profile to export by sorting the values of other selected columns (excluding complex types such as arrays, maps, or objects). The sorted values are evaluated in lexicographical order, and the first profile is selected.
Example scenario

Consider the following data, where the deduplication key is the Email column:

Email*

first_name

last_name

timestamp

test1@test.com

John

Morris

2024-10-12T09:50

test1@test.com

John

Doe

2024-10-12T09:50

test2@test.com

Frank

Smith

2024-10-12T09:50

After deduplication, the export file will contain:

Email*

first_name

last_name

timestamp

test1@test.com

John

Doe

2024-10-12T09:50

test2@test.com

Frank

Smith

2024-10-12T09:50

Explanation: For test1@test.com, both profiles share the same deduplication key and timestamp. The algorithm sorts the first_name and last_name column values lexicographically. Since the first names are identical, the tie is resolved using the last_name column, where “Doe” comes before “Morris.”

Improved reliability: This updated deduplication process ensures that successive runs with the same coordinates will always produce the same results, improving consistency.

Perform data transformations through calculated fields

You can use the Calculated fields control to perform various data transformations on the data exported to file-based destinations.

Known limitations

The new Mapping page has the following known limitations:

Audience membership attribute cannot be selected through the mapping workflow

Due to a known limitation, you cannot currently use the Select field window to add segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status to your file exports. Instead, you need to manually paste the value xdm: segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status into the schema field, as shown below.

Screen recording showing the audience membership workaround in the mapping step of the activation workflow.

NOTE

For cloud storage destinations, the following attributes are added to the mapping by default:

segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status
segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.lastQualificationTime

File exports will vary in the following ways, depending on whether segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status is selected:

If the segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status field is selected, exported files include Active members in the initial full snapshot and newly Active and Expired members in subsequent incremental exports.
If the segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status field is not selected, exported files include only Active members in the initial full snapshot and in subsequent incremental exports.

Identity namespaces cannot currently be selected for exports

Selecting identity namespaces for export, as shown in the image below, is currently not supported. Selecting any identity namespaces for export will result in an error in the Review step.

Unsupported mapping showing identity exports.

As a temporary workaround if you need to add identity namespaces to your exported files during the beta, you can either:

Use the legacy cloud storage destinations for the dataflows where you want to include identity namespaces in the exports
Upload identities as attributes into Experience Platform, to then export them to your cloud storage destinations.

Select profile attributes

IMPORTANT

All cloud storage destinations in the catalog can view an improved Mapping step which replaces the Select attributes step described in this section.

This Select attributes step is still displayed for the Adobe Campaign, Oracle Responsys, Oracle Eloqua, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud email marketing destinations.

For profile-based destinations, you must select the profile attributes that you want to send to the target destination.

In the Select attributes page, select Add new field.
Select the arrow to the right of the Schema field entry.
In the Select field page, select the XDM attributes or identity namespaces that you want to send to the destination, then choose Select.
To add more mappings, repeat steps one to three.

NOTE

Adobe Experience Platform prefills your selection with four recommended, commonly used attributes from your schema: person.name.firstName, person.name.lastName, personalEmail.address, segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status.

Image showing prefilled recommended attributes in the mapping step of the audience activation workflow.

IMPORTANT

Due to a known limitation, you cannot currently use the Select field window to add segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status to your file exports. Instead, you must manually paste the value xdm: segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status into the schema field, as shown below.

Screen recording showing the audience membership workaround in the mapping step of the activation workflow.

File exports vary in the following ways, depending on whether segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status is selected:

If the segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status field is selected, exported files include Active members in the initial full snapshot and Active and Expired members in subsequent incremental exports.
If the segmentMembership.seg_namespace.seg_id.status field is not selected, exported files include only Active members in the initial full snapshot and in subsequent incremental exports.

Select enrichment attributes

IMPORTANT

This step is displayed only if you selected Custom upload audiences during the audience selection step.

Enrichment attributes correspond to custom uploaded audiences ingested in Experience Platform as Custom uploads. In this step, you can select which attributes you would like to export to your destination, for each selected external audience.

UI image showing the enrichment attributes selection step.

Follow the steps below to select enrichment attributes for each external audience:

In the Enrichment attributes column, select the (Edit) button.
Select Add enrichment attribute. A new empty schema field is shown.
Select the button to the right of the empty field to open the field selection screen.
Select the attributes that you want to export for the audience.
After you have added all the attributes that you want to export, select Save and close.
Repeat these steps for each external audience.

If you want to activate external audiences to your destinations without exporting any attribute, enable the Exclude enrichment attributes toggle. This option exports the profiles from the external audiences, but none of their corresponding attributes are sent to your destination.

UI image showing the exclude enrichment attributes toggle.

Select Next to move to the Review step.

Review

NOTE

If any data usage labels have been applied to certain fields within a dataset (rather than the entire dataset), enforcement of those field-level labels on activation occurs under the following conditions:

The fields are used in the audience definition.
The fields are configured as projected attributes for the target destination.

For example, if the field person.name.firstName has certain data usage labels that conflict with the destination’s marketing action, you would be shown a data usage policy violation in the review step. For more information, see Data Governance in Adobe Experience Platform.

On the Review page, you can see a summary of your selection. Select Cancel to break up the flow, Back to modify your settings, or Finish to confirm your selection and start sending data to the destination.

Selection summary displayed in the review step.

If your organization purchased Adobe Healthcare Shield or Adobe Privacy & Security Shield, select View applicable consent policies to see which consent policies are applied and how many profiles are included in the activation as a result of them. Read about consent policy evaluation for more information.

Data usage policy checks

In the Review step, Experience Platform also checks for any data usage policy violations. Shown below is an example where a policy is violated. You cannot complete the audience activation workflow until you have resolved the violation. For information on how to resolve policy violations, read about data usage policy violations in the data governance documentation section.

A data policy violation example shown in the activation workflow.

Filter audiences

Also in this step you can use the available filters on the page to display only the audiences whose schedule or mapping has been updated as part of this workflow. You can also toggle which table columns you want to see.

Screen recording showing the available audience filters in the review step.

If you are satisfied with your selection and no policy violations have been detected, select Finish to confirm your selection and start sending data to the destination.

Verify audience activation

When exporting audiences to cloud storage destinations, Adobe Experience Platform creates a .csv, .json, or .parquet file in the storage location that you provided. Expect a new file to be created in your storage location according to the schedule you set in the workflow. The default file format is shown below, but you can edit the components of the file name:
<destinationName>_segment<segmentID>_<timestamp-yyyymmddhhmmss>.csv

For example, if you selected a daily export frequency, the files you would receive on three consecutive days could look like this:

Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_segment12341e18-abcd-49c2-836d-123c88e76c39_20200408061804.csv
Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_segment12341e18-abcd-49c2-836d-123c88e76c39_20200409052200.csv
Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_segment12341e18-abcd-49c2-836d-123c88e76c39_20200410061130.csv

The presence of these files in your storage location is confirmation of successful activation. To understand how the exported files are structured, you can download a sample .csv file. This sample file includes the profile attributes person.firstname, person.lastname, person.gender, person.birthyear, and personalEmail.address.

recommendation-more-help

Activate audiences to batch profile export destinations

Overview

Prerequisites

Supported file formats for export

Select your destination

Select your audiences

Schedule audience export

Export full files

Export incremental files

Configure file names

Mapping

Mandatory attributes

Deduplication keys

Deduplication example

Deduplication use case 1: no deduplication

Deduplication use case 2: deduplication based on identity namespace

Deduplication use case 3: deduplication based on a single profile attribute

Deduplication use case 4: deduplication based on two profile attributes

Deduplication behavior for profiles with the same timestamp

Key considerations

Perform data transformations through calculated fields

Known limitations

Audience membership attribute cannot be selected through the mapping workflow

Identity namespaces cannot currently be selected for exports

Select profile attributes

Select enrichment attributes

Review

Consent policy evaluation

Data usage policy checks

Filter audiences

Verify audience activation