Activate audience data to batch profile export destinations

Overview

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

Prerequisites

To activate data 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.

Select your destination

1. Go to Connections > Destinations, and select the Catalog tab.

   

2. Select Activate segments on the card corresponding to the destination where you want to activate your segments, as shown in the image below.

   

3. Select the destination connection that you want to use to activate your segments, then select Next.

   

4. Move to the next section to select your segments.

Select your segments

Use the check boxes to the left of the segment names to select the segments that you want to activate to the destination, then select Next.

Schedule segment export

Adobe Experience Platform exports data for email marketing and cloud storage destinations in the form of CSV files. In the Scheduling page, you can configure the schedule and the file names for each segment you are exporting. Configuring the schedule is mandatory, but configuring the file name is optional.

Select the Create schedule button corresponding to the segment that you want to send to your destination.

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 segment.

1. 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.

2. Use the Time toggle to select whether the export should happen immediately after segment 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.

   NOTE

   The After segment evaluation option described below is currently available only to select Beta customers.

   Use the After segment evaluation option to have the activation job run immediately after the daily Platform batch segmentation job completes. This ensures that when the activation job runs, the most up-to-date profiles are exported to your destination.

   
   Use the Scheduled option to have the activation job run at a fixed time. This ensures that Experience Platform profile data is exported at the same time each day, but 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

   Because of the way internal Experience Platform processes are configured, the first incremental or full file export may not contain all the backfill data.
   
   To ensure a complete and most up-to-date backfill data export for both full and incremental files, Adobe recommends setting the first file export time after 12 PM GMT of the following day. This limitation will be addressed in future releases.

3. 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 10th.

4. 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 segment, and subsequent files are incremental profile qualifications since the previous export.

1. 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.

2. Use the Time selector to choose the time of day, in UTC format, when the export should take place.

   IMPORTANT

   Because of the way internal Experience Platform processes are configured, the first incremental or full file export may not contain all the backfill data.
   
   To ensure a complete and most up-to-date backfill data export for both full and incremental files, Adobe recommends setting the first file export time after 12 PM GMT of the following day. This limitation will be addressed in future releases.

3. 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 10th.

4. Select Create to save the schedule.

Configure file names

The default file names consist of destination name, segment 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.

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

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

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

• Segment name: You can append the segment name to the file name.
• 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: Add custom text to the file names.

Select Apply changes to confirm your selection.

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

Select profile attributes

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

1. In the Select attributes page, select Add new field.

   

2. Select the arrow to the right of the Schema field entry.

   

3. In the Select field page, select the XDM attributes that you want to send to the destination, then choose Select.

   

4. To add more mappings, repeat steps one to three.

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

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

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 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 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

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": "johndoe_2@example.com"
      }
    ]
  },
  "segmentMembership": {
    "ups": {
      "fa5c4622-6847-4199-8dd4-8b7c7c7ed1d6": {
        "status": "existing",
        "lastQualificationTime": "2021-03-10 10:03:08"
      }
    }
  },
  "person": {
    "name": {
      "lastName": "Doe",
      "firstName": "John"
    }
  },
  "personalEmail": {
    "address": "johndoe@example.com"
  }
}

Profile B

{
  "identityMap": {
    "Email": [
      {
        "id": "johndoe_1@example.com"
      },
      {
        "id": "johndoe_2@example.com"
      }
    ]
  },
  "segmentMembership": {
    "ups": {
      "fa5c4622-6847-4199-8dd4-8b7c7c7ed1d6": {
        "status": "existing",
        "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.

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 segment, so it is the only one getting exported.

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 segment, so it is the only one getting exported.

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.

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.

Review

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.

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

Verify segment activation

For email marketing destinations and cloud storage destinations, Adobe Experience Platform creates a .csv file in the storage location that you provided. Expect a new file to be created in your storage location every day. The default file format is:
<destinationName>_segment<segmentID>_<timestamp-yyyymmddhhmmss>.csv

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.