On this page: Protect sensitive data by creating governance policies that link labels to marketing actions, then applying them to journeys, campaigns, and custom actions so restricted fields cannot be shared externally.
Get started with data governance policies gs
With its Data Usage Labelling and Enforcement (DULE) governance framework, Adobe Experience Platform allows you to manage and enforce data governance policies across your channels by labelling your fields and creating marketing actions for each channel.
Once labels and marketing actions are defined, you can create data governance policies that link these two elements. For example, you can set up a policy that associates an “ePHI” label with an “email targeting” marketing action, ensuring that fields labeled as “ePHI” are not used to personalize email messages. Learn how to create data governance policies
After you have created the governance policies, you can apply the marketing actions to your journeys/campaigns and journeys custom actions.
Learn how to apply marketing actions in Journey Optimizer
When building a journey or campaign, after selecting a channel configuration or adding a custom action, the system verifies if the marketing action in the message channel configuration or the custom action is part of a data governance policy. If so, the systems checks whether any fields from the targeted audience or message personalization are labeled and restricted by the policy. If such a label is detected, publishing the journey or campaign is blocked. Learn how to detect data governance policy violation
Create labels and marketing actions labels-marketing-actions
The first step to enforce data governance policy is to create label and attach them to fields for which you want to restrict usage, and marketing actions for each of your channels.
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In the left menu, under Privacy, click Policies.
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Select the Labels tab and click Create label.
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Define a name and friendly name for your label. For example, ePHI1.
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In the left menu, under Data management, click Schemas, and click the Apply access and data governance labels button. Select your schema and field (for example “blood type”) and select the label previously created, ePHI1 in our example.
note NOTE Labels can only be applied to profile attribute fields. Event-based fields (e.g. journey context event fields) are not supported: labels applied to those fields will not restrict data usage. -
Go back to the Policies menu, select the Marketing action tab and click Create marketing action. We recommend that you create one marketing action for each channel and each third-party custom action used in your journeys. For example, let’s create a Slack marketing action which will be used for your Slack custom action.
Create a data governance policy policy
Now that labels and marketing actions have been created, you can link them together into data governance policies. To do so, select the Browse tab, click Create policy and select Data governance policy. Select your label (ePHI1) and marketing action (Slack marketing action).
When you will use, in a journey, your Slack custom action configured with the Slack marketing action, the associated policy will be leveraged.
Apply marketing actions in Journey Optimizer apply-marketing-actions
In order for data governance policies to be enforced in Journey Optimizer, you need to apply marketing actions to your journeys, campaigns, or custom actions.
Apply marketing actions to journeys and campaigns journeys-campaigns
After you have created governance policies, you must apply the relevant marketing actions to your Journey Optimizer channel configurations. To do this, follow these steps:
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Access the Channels > General settings > Channel configurations menu.
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Open an existing channel configuration or create a new one.
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In the Marketing action field, select the marketing action(s) to associate to the journeys/campaigns using this configuration. All consent and data governance policies associated with the marketing action are leveraged in order to respect the preferences of your customers and the restrictions set up for sensitive fields. Learn more
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Complete the channel configuration setup then save it. Learn how to set up channel configuration.
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When creating a message in your journey or campaign, select the relevant channel configuration. Complete the configuration of your journey or campaign and save it.
Before activating the journey or campaign, the system verifies if the marketing action in the selected channel configuration is part of a data governance policy. If so, the systems checks whether any fields from the targeted audience or message personalization are labeled and restricted by the policy.
If the system identifies a restricted field, an error is displayed preventing you from publishing the journey or the campaign. Learn how to detect governance policy violation
Policy violation analysis steps for journeys and campaigns
Apply marketing action to custom actions custom-actions
Let’s take the example of the blood type field that you need to restrict from being exported to a third-party using custom actions. To do so, you need to apply the marketing action to your custom action, and then build your journey and add your custom action in it.
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In the left menu, under Administration, click Configurations and select Actions.
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Open your Slack custom action. When configuring a custom action, two fields can be used for data governance.
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The Channel field allows you to select the channel related to this custom action. It prefills the Required marketing action field with the default marketing action for the selected channel. If you select other, no marketing action will be defined by default. In our example, we select the channel other.
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The Required marketing action allows you to define the marketing action related to your custom action. For example, if you use that custom action to send emails using a third-party, you can select Email targeting. In our example, we select the Slack marketing action. The governance policies associated to that marketing action are retrieved and leveraged.
The other steps for configuring a custom action are detailed in this section.
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In the left menu, under Journey management, click Journeys.
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Create your journey and add your custom action. When adding the custom action in a journey, several options allow you to manage data governance. Click the Show read-only fields to display all parameters.
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The Channel and Required marketing action, defined when configuring the custom action, are displayed at the top of the screen. You cannot modify these fields.
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You can define an Additional marketing action to set the type of custom action. This allows you to define the purpose of the custom action in this journey. In addition to the required marketing action, which is usually specific to a channel, you can define an additional marketing action which will be specific to the custom action in this particular journey. For example: a workout communication, a newsletter, a fitness communication, etc. Both the required marketing action and the additional marketing action will apply. In our example, we do not use an additional marketing action.
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If one of the fields labelled ePHI1 (the blood type field in our example) are detected in the action parameters, an error is displayed, preventing you from publishing the journey. Learn how to detect governance policy violation
Policy violation analysis steps for journeys custom actions
Detect policy violation violation
If the system identifies a restricted field in a journey/campaign, or a custom action, an error is displayed preventing you from publishing it.
Errors are visible from the Alerts button. Select the error to display detailed information on the data governance policy violation that happened.
This dialog indicates that the current journey/campaign configuration violates an existing data governance policy. Use the data lineage diagram to understand what other configuration changes need to be made before you can activate your journey or campaign.
Detailed information is available in the data usage policy violation documentation{_blank}.
This section contains structured knowledge intended to support interpretation, retrieval, and question answering related to this topic.
For complete understanding, this information should be combined with the documentation on this page. Neither source is intended to stand alone; the page describes the feature, while this section provides additional context that helps disambiguate terminology, intent, applicability, and constraints.
- TL;DR: This page explains how to create data governance policies that link labels to marketing actions and apply them to journeys, campaigns, and custom actions so restricted fields cannot be shared externally.
Intents:
- Create labels and apply them to profile attribute fields through Schemas
- Create marketing actions for each channel and third-party custom action
- Create a data governance policy that links a label to a marketing action
- Apply marketing actions to channel configurations and to custom actions
- Detect and interpret a data governance policy violation
Glossary:
- Data governance policy: A policy that links a label and a marketing action so that fields carrying that label cannot be used for the associated action (product-specific)
- Label: A tag applied to fields to restrict their usage, created under Privacy Policies (product-specific)
- Marketing action: A configurable element created per channel and per third-party custom action that governance policies are attached to (product-specific)
- Required marketing action: The marketing action defined when configuring a custom action, prefilled from the selected Channel and not editable in the journey (product-specific)
- Additional marketing action: A marketing action defined when adding a custom action to a journey to set the purpose of the custom action in that particular journey (product-specific)
- Data lineage diagram: The diagram in the policy violation dialog used to understand what configuration changes are needed before activation (product-specific)
Guardrails:
- DULE policy enforcement only applies to profile attributes; event-based fields (context attributes) such as journey event fields are not supported, and labels applied to them have no effect.
- Labels can only be applied to profile attribute fields.
- When applying a marketing action to custom actions, Campaign v7/v8 and Campaign Standard journey actions are not supported.
- If the system identifies a restricted field in a journey, campaign, or custom action, an error is displayed that prevents you from publishing it.
- When both are set, the required marketing action and the additional marketing action both apply.
Terminology:
- Canonical name: Data governance policy — Acronym: DULE (Data Usage Labelling and Enforcement) — variants: data governance, governance policy
- Synonyms: “labelling fields” = “applying labels to fields”
- Do not confuse: “Required marketing action” (defined on the custom action, read-only in the journey) ≠ “Additional marketing action” (defined per journey to set the purpose of the custom action)
- Do not confuse: “label” (tag on a field) ≠ “marketing action” (element the label is linked to in a policy)
FAQ:
- Q: Why does a label on a journey event field not restrict data usage? — DULE policy enforcement only applies to profile attributes; labels applied to event-based fields have no effect.
- Q: How is a data governance policy created? — From the Browse tab, click Create policy, select Data governance policy, then choose a label and a marketing action to link.
- Q: Where are marketing actions applied for journeys and campaigns? — In the Marketing action field of a channel configuration under Channels General settings Channel configurations.
- Q: Can a marketing action be applied to Campaign v7/v8 or Campaign Standard actions? — No, those journey actions are not supported when applying a marketing action to custom actions.
- Q: How is a policy violation detected? — An error prevents publishing and is visible from the Alerts button; selecting it shows details and a data lineage diagram.