Create classes

In this video, I’ll show you how to create your own classes in Adobe Experience Platform, in case you need them to model your data. As you probably know, all data ingested into Adobe Experience Platform, must adhere to the Experience Data Model or XDM schemas. Each schema is based on a class which describes the type of data it contains. For example, a class could describe an individual, a retail product, a hotel room, a promotion, and so on. Adobe provides many standard classes out of the box. And before you start building a custom class, you should first browse through the list of available classes in platform, to see if there’s a standard one which is relevant to your needs. While developing the data model for Luma, our retail demo brand, we determined we needed a schema for a brick and mortar store locations. I didn’t see any relevant classes when browsing the list. So, I’ve decided to build my own. There is no create class button on the classes page. You need to add the class in the schema creation workflow. So, I’ll click create schema, next, I’ll click browse and get a list of all of the available classes, similar to what we were just looking at on the classes page. At the top there’s a create new class option, which I’ll select, then you just name the class, give it a description and select whether or not it’s representing record or time series data. You might recall this example from the overview video in which we discussed record data describing the subject of this sentence, and time series data representing the actions. In this case, the data we need to capture for our store schema are things like; the store name, address, and phone number which would be record data. I’ll select record data and continue to the next screen. Here, I’m prompted to add field groups to this schema. Field groups are tied to the class they’re based upon. We’re creating a new class, so there aren’t any existing field groups we’d expect to see, but like with all good rules, there are some exceptions. There are a few standard field groups which we make available to all classes. For now, I’ll cancel out of this workflow and look at the contents of my schema. Now fields come from both field groups and classes. There are some fields that are included in the class based on whether you choose record or time series. Let me just show you the difference side by side with a new class of each type. Classes should contain the smallest number of common fields that all scheme is based on this class would need. So that multiple compatible datasets could merge. With the Luma data model, I don’t currently have any intention to use more than one dataset with this schema, however, just in case the store ID is probably the minimal field that should be in every schema using this class. I can add a field directly to this class by adding it to the schema. Like with all custom fields, it will be namespace by my tenant ID. My other fields, I can add later through a field group. I’ll save my schema, cancel out of it, and return to the classes page where I can see my new store class listed as customer owned. If I open it up, I can see my store ID field which will be automatically added to any new schema that uses this class. So that’s how you add new classes to use in your XDM schemas. Good luck. -