Activate audiences to batch profile export destinations

Overview 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 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 supported-file-formats-export

The following file formats are supported when exporting audiences:

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 select-destination

Select your audiences select-audiences

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

Schedule audience export scheduling

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.

Use the New audiences and Activated audiences options to switch between two views of this page:

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.

For each audience, choose one of two export types: Export full files or Export incremental files.

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To edit multiple schedules at the same time, select the audiences by using the checkboxes 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.

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Export full files 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.

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Understanding scheduled export behavior export-behavior

Scheduled exports include audience snapshot data plus any incremental profile or identity changes that occur between snapshot creation and export time. This differs from on-demand exports, which use snapshot data only.

The following table highlights how scheduled exports differ from on-demand exports, particularly in terms of data freshness and intended use:

If profiles get updated after audience evaluation, scheduled exports will include the updated attribute values even though audience membership was determined at evaluation time.

Example: An audience for “profiles where retailID is null” may export profiles with retailID populated if that field was updated after evaluation but before the scheduled export.

Recommendations

For on-demand exports, see the documentation on exporting files on-demand.

Export incremental files 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.

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Configure file names 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.

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

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

To edit multiple file names at the same time, select the audiences by using the checkboxes 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.

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Select Apply changes to confirm your selection.

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

Mapping 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:

For details on mandatory attributes, deduplication keys, calculated fields, and known limitations of the Mapping step, see the batch destinations mapping reference.

Select enrichment attributes select-enrichment-attributes

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.

TIP

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.

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

Select Next to move to the Review step.

[Beta]{class="badge informative"} Export arrays and objects from enrichment attributes export-arrays-enrichment-attributes

When exporting audiences to cloud storage destinations with JSON or Parquet output and the Export arrays, maps, and objects toggle enabled, you can export complex data structures, including entire arrays or selected fields from arrays of objects, as enrichment attributes.

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The enrichment attributes step shows a two-column mapping interface:

This functionality is available only when all of the following conditions are met:

Export an entire array export-entire-array

Select the name of the array attribute from the source field selection screen. The source field populates with the array path and the target field auto-populates with the array name. The exported output preserves all objects in the array with all their properties.

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Export a single field from an array of objects export-single-array-field

When you select a property nested inside an array of objects, the Source field automatically populates with a transformArray calculated expression using to_object to extract that property from every object in the array.

For example, selecting someArray[*].amount populates the source field with:

transformArray(someArray, x -> to_object("amount", x.amount))

The target field auto-populates with the leaf node name (amount). You can change the name of the target field if you desire to do so.

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Export multiple fields from an array of objects export-multiple-array-fields

To export more than one property from the same array of objects, follow this two step process:

For example, to export both amount and date from someArray, start by selecting someArray[*].amount, then edit the expression to:

transformArray(someArray, x -> to_object("amount", x.amount, "date", x.date))

Only the fields you specify are included in each object within the exported array. Additionally, you can change the name of the top-level array in your exported file if desired.

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Review 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.

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Consent policy evaluation consent-policy-evaluation

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 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.

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Filter audiences filter-audiences

Use the New audiences and Activated audiences toggle to switch between the audiences that you added in this activation flow and the audiences that you already activated to the destination in previous flows.

To choose which columns appear in the table, select the customize table icon. In the Customize table dialog, select or clear the columns that you want to show, then select Apply.

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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 verify

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.