Create schemas

In this video, I’ll show you how to create schemas for Adobe Experience platform-based applications using the interface. For our example, I’ll create a simple loyalty system schema for our sample retail brand, Luma. There are a few things you need to have in place before you begin building your schema. First, you should have designed your data model and know what fields you need to capture. Here’s our entity relationship diagram for Luma. Second, you need access. An administrator needs to have granted you the permission items for data modeling. Now, we’re ready to go into the interface of any platform-based application and get to work. Select Schemas from the left navigation. Here is the Schemas Browse screen, where you can view and manage your existing schemas. There are column sorters, a search box, and filter options. Clicking the name of an existing schema will open the editor. But notice that if you click elsewhere on the row, you get this sidebar with additional metadata, including a JSON file with sample data to test the ingestion process. The schema ID is really helpful if you use the Schemas API. Let’s create our new schema. When I click Create Schema, I enter a workflow. On the first step of the workflow, I choose a base class for the schema. I have quick access to the two most common classes, Individual Profile for attribute data, and Experience Event for behavior. You can also select Other, where you can choose from a different Adobe class or create your own. Our loyalty data is attribute data, so I’ll select Individual Profile and then select Next. On the next step, I give my schema a name and an optional description. It shows me the fields that are automatically included as part of the Individual Profile class. Then I can click Finish. The easiest way to start adding fields is to just hit the plus button at the top of the schema, and then in the Field Name box, start typing what you’re looking for. I’ll type First Name. Since this is a very common field, a list of results come up, so we can quickly add it as a standard XDM field. Adobe provides a lot of standard fields out of the box to make your data modeling faster and simpler. Now, you’ll see that there are a few instances of first name fields. The difference is that these fields are in different field groups. Field groups are just groups of fields organized around a theme. You can preview the field group by clicking the icon. I see this group is oriented to B2B use cases, so it’s not what I want. Demographic details looks more promising. I also need Last Name in my schema too, and I can check both boxes to add them in one shot. If I decide later that I actually need more of those fields, I can select Manage Related Fields to open that view back up and check or uncheck more of those fields. Another way to add fields is to add an entire field group. The field groups shown are all compatible with the XDM individual profile class I’m using. If I were using the Experience event class, I might see different field groups. There are industry filters on the left. Filter the list to those most relevant to your industry. Here is a loyalty field group. Perfect. I can quickly add that to my schema. If I don’t want some of the fields, again I can use the Manage Related Fields option to open the group and remove individual fields. Business users at Luma prefer to call it Member Since instead of Join Date. Even though we call it a Standard Field, you can still customize the display name and description to whatever you want. The display name is what will appear to marketers in the Segment Builder, so they’ll be able to find it using familiar language. Now we have one remaining field in our ER diagram for CRMID, which doesn’t exist in any of the standard field groups. Let’s look at how to add that. Again, I’ll hit the plus button at the top of the schema and start typing my field name. And then I just hit enter to add it. You need to put it in a field group, which you can also do in this workflow. Now my new field appears and it will be namespaced under my tenant ID, Tech Marketing Demos, so it’s really clear that this is a custom field. You can also add custom fields within more logical locations. For example, if I want a field for Secret Agent Code Name, I can add that field directly in the Name object. This will extend the field group. Let’s have a look at what we’ve built so far. The Composition column has the high-level info. I can see my schema name, base class, and my field groups. Structure shows the fields which have been added to the schema. If I click on the name of the class, it will highlight all of the fields that are added by the class. If I click on the field group names, again, it will highlight the fields contributed by that group. You can also use the search box to quickly find a field. When I select a field, the Properties column shows me all of its details. I can also click back on the schema name to see the properties of the entire schema. So, our schema is mostly built. Two other big topics are Identity Fields and Enabling Schemas for Profile, but we’ve covered a lot and those are big topics too, so we’ll save them for additional videos. But at this point, you should know how to build schemas in the interface of any application built on Adobe Experience Platform.