Create a Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection using the Flow Service API

IMPORTANT
Custom object ingestion is currently not supported by the Salesforce Marketing Cloud source integration.

A base connection represents the authenticated connection between a source and Adobe Experience Platform.

This tutorial walks you through the steps to create a base connection for Salesforce Marketing Cloud using the Flow Service API.

Getting started

This guide requires a working understanding of the following components of Adobe Experience Platform:

  • Sources: Experience Platform allows data to be ingested from various sources while providing you with the ability to structure, label, and enhance incoming data using Platform services.
  • Sandboxes: Experience Platform provides virtual sandboxes which partition a single Platform instance into separate virtual environments to help develop and evolve digital experience applications.

Using Platform APIs

For information on how to successfully make calls to Platform APIs, see the guide on getting started with Platform APIs.

The following section provides additional information that you will need to know in order to successfully connect to Salesforce Marketing Cloud using the Flow Service API.

Gather required credentials

In order for Flow Service to connect with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you must provide the following connection properties:

Credential
Description
host
The host server of your application. This is often your subdomain. Note: When entering your host value, you need to specify the {subdomain}.rest.marketingcloudapis.com. For example, if your host URL is https://acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst.auth.marketingcloudapis.com/, then you must enter acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst.rest.marketingcloudapis.com/ as your host value.
clientId
The client ID associated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud application.
clientSecret
The client secret associated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud application.
connectionSpec.id
The connection specification returns a source’s connector properties, including authentication specifications related to creating the base and source connections. The connection specification ID for Salesforce Marketing Cloud is: ea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003.

For more information about getting started, refer to this Salesforce Marketing Cloud document.

Create a base connection

A base connection retains information between your source and Platform, including your source’s authentication credentials, the current state of the connection, and your unique base connection ID. The base connection ID allows you to explore and navigate files from within your source and identify the specific items that you want to ingest, including information regarding their data types and formats.

To create a base connection ID, make a POST request to the /connections endpoint while providing your Salesforce Marketing Cloud authentication credentials as part of the request body.

API format

POST /connections

Request

The following request creates a base connection for Salesforce Marketing Cloud:

curl -X POST \
  'https://platform.adobe.io/data/foundation/flowservice/connections' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
  -H 'x-api-key: {API_KEY}' \
  -H 'x-gw-ims-org-id: {ORG_ID}' \
  -H 'x-sandbox-name: {SANDBOX_NAME}' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
      "name": "Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection",
      "description": "Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection",
      "auth": {
          "specName": "Client-Id-Secret Based Authentication",
          "params": {
              "host": "acme-ab12c3d4e5fg6hijk7lmnop8qrst"
              "clientId": "acme-salesforce-marketing-cloud",
              "clientSecret": "xxxx"
          }
      },
      "connectionSpec": {
          "id": "ea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003",
          "version": "1.0"
      }
  }'
Property
Description
auth.params.clientId
The client ID associated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud application.
auth.params.clientSecret
The client secret associated with your Salesforce Marketing Cloud application.
connectionSpec.id
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud connection specification ID: ea1c2a08-b722-11eb-8529-0242ac130003.

Response

A successful response returns the newly created connection, including its unique connection identifier (id). This ID is required to explore your data in the next tutorial.

{
    "id": "2fce94c1-9a93-4971-8e94-c19a93097129",
    "etag": "\"d403848a-0000-0200-0000-5e978f7b0000\""
}

Next steps

By following this tutorial, you have created a Salesforce Marketing Cloud base connection using the Flow Service API. You can use this base connection ID in the following tutorials:

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