Extract file extract-file
The Extract file activity is a Data management activity. Use this activity to export data from Adobe Campaign in the form of an external file. The data can then be exported to a server location such as SFTP, Cloud storage or your campaign server using a Transfer file activity.
To configure the Extract file activity, add an Extract file activity into your workflow then follow the steps below.
Configure the file to extract extract-configuration
The File to extract section allows you to configure the file properties and the data to include.
-
In the File name field, enter the desired name for the file to extract.
You can personalize the file’s name using event variables, conditions and date/time functions. To do this, click the Open personalization dialog icon to open the expression editor. Learn how to work with event variables and the expression editor
-
Specify the columns to present in the extracted file. To do this, follow these steps:
- Click the Add output column.
- Choose the attribute to display in the column then confirm. Available attributes depend on the workflow’s targeting dimension.
- Once the column is added, you can change its Label and modify the associated Attribute.
- If you want to apply a transformation to the column’s values, select it from the drop-down list. For example, you can switch all values in the selected column to upper case.
-
Repeat these steps to add as many columns as needed in the extraction file. To change the position of a column, use the up and down arrows.
-
To remove all duplicate rows from the extracted file, toggle on the Remove duplicate rows(Listing) option.
-
To sort the extracted file based on an attribute, toggle on the Enable Sorting option then choose the attribute you want to sort the file by, along with the desired sorting method (ascending or descending). You can sort on any attribute from the current targeting dimension, regardless of wether it has been added to the file’s columns or not.
Configure the extracted file format file
The Destination format section allows you to configure how the extracted file is formatted.
-
Choose the Output format for the extracted file: Text, Text using fixed with columns, CSV (Excel) or XML.
-
Click the Extraction format button to access specific options related to the selected format. Expand the section to bellow for more information.
accordion Available Extraction format options - Use first line as column header (Text / CSV (Excel) format): Toggle this option on to use the first column as header.
- Column separator (Text format): Specify the character to use as column separator in the output file.
- String delimiter (Text format): Specify how to delimit strings in the ouput file.
- End of line (Text format): Specify how to delimit the end of lines in the output file.
- Encoding: Choose the encoding of the output file.
- Date format and separators: Specify how dates should be formatted in the output file.
- Number format: Specify how numbers should be formatted in the output file.
- Export labels instead of internal values of enumerations: Toggle this option on in case you export enumeration values and you want to retrieve columns labels, which are easier to understand, rather than internal IDs.
Add a post-processing stage script
The Export modification script allows you to apply a processing stage to execute during the data extraction such as zipping or encryption. To do this, click the Edit script button.
The expression editor opens, allowing you to enter the command to apply to the file. The left hand-side pane provides predefined syntaxes that you can leverage to build your script. Learn how to work with event variables and the expression editor
Additional options additiona-options
Once the output file extraction has been configured, additional options related to transitions and error management are available:
- Generate outbound transition: Toggle this option on to add an outbound transition and configure its label.
- Do not generate a file if the inbound transition is empty: Toggle this option on to skip the file extraction if the inbound transition contains no data.
- Process error: Toggle this option on to add an outbound transition if any error is encountered during the file extraction.
Example example
In the following example, we are using a Build audience activity followed by an Extract file activity to extract all the targeted profiles into a CSV file.
-
The File name field is configured to include the date of the extraction.
-
Columns are added to display the profiles’ first and last names, their customer IDs and creation dates in the database.
