[Limited Availability]{class="badge informative"}
Real-Time CDP Collaboration quick start guide
Get started with Real-Time CDP Collaboration by configuring your organization, sourcing audiences, and enabling privacy-focused activation and measurement.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure you have the following:
- An active Real-Time CDP Collaboration license.
- System or product administrator access to Adobe Experience Platform.
- Access provisioned for end users.
- Roles created for your organization and assigned to users.
- Access to branding assets, such as your organization’s name, logo, and banner.
- A defined match key strategy
- (Optional) Access to a supported cloud source (Amazon S3 or Snowflake) if you’re not using Experience Platform for audience management.
Step 1: Complete role-based setup complete-role-based-setup
Your organization’s access roles determine what users can see and do in Collaboration. Before proceeding, make sure role-based permissions are set up correctly to ensure appropriate access and visibility in the platform.
Resources:
Watch this video to learn how to assign product access and permissions for Collaboration using the Admin Console and Experience Platform.
Step 2: Set up your Collaboration account set-up-your-account
Before you can source audiences, you must configure your account in Collaboration. This governs how you appear and what you have access to in the interface.
If you don’t have the necessary access, please refer back to step 1 or contact your organization’s administrator for help completing this setup.
Define your account’s role in Collaboration, provide branding assets, and configure match keys to align audiences across connections.
-
Assign a role – Determines whether your account is an advertiser or a publisher. Your role defines which capabilities you have in Collaboration. To learn more about how roles impact the collaboration workflow, see the roles guide.
-
Branding assets – Add the following to your account:
- Account name (max 100 characters)
- Description (max 1,000 characters)
- Logo (SVG <20KB, ideally square)
- Contact email – Provide a business email for collaborators to use after a connection is established.
- Configure match keys – Select the identifiers used for audience matching.
To learn more about initial account setup, including how to define roles, upload branding assets, and configure match keys, see the initial account setup guide.
Watch this video for a step-by-step walkthrough of an advertiser setup, including account creation, branding, and match key configuration.
Step 3: Source audiences (from Experience Platform or a cloud source) source-audiences
Once your account is created and your branding and match keys are configured, you’re ready to begin sourcing audiences. Choose one of the following sourcing methods based on your data store and business needs.
Option A: Source from Experience Platform
Use Collaboration to link a sandbox that contains audiences. Use this self-service method to reference existing audience segments from within your Experience Platform instance.
Configure audiences
Configure how audiences are prepared, matched, and governed for use in connections.
- Select audiences (Experience Platform only) – Choose audience segments with supported identifiers.
- Map match keys – Align audience fields with the configured match keys.
- Apply transformations – Hash plaintext values (for example, email) if needed.
- Schedule refreshes – Define update frequency (for example, daily).
- Configure consent settings – Determine which profiles are eligible to be included in connections by selecting a consent mode: opt-in, opt-out, or none.
- Advertisers can source up to 25 audiences.
- Publishers can source up to 250 audiences (each with a minimum of 1,000 IDs).
Hashed match keys must be SHA256-hashed.
If you provide hashed values that use uppercase characters, Collaboration automatically converts them to lowercase.
If your source contains plaintext identifiers, use the Apply transformation option to apply hashing. This option is only available when sourcing audiences from Experience Platform and is not supported for cloud-based sources.
To see a full walkthrough of how to source audiences using Collaboration, watch the video below.
Alternatively, see the document on sourcing audiences in Collaboration.
Option B: Source from Snowflake or Amazon S3
To configure a cloud source (for example, AWS S3 or Snowflake), prepare your audience data using the following Audience Specification PDF. Once complete, or if you have questions, contact your Adobe account representative to finalize the setup. This method is not self-service and requires Adobe assistance.
segment_name and activation_id, and use supported formats such as CSV or Parquet. Adobe does not normalize data before activation. TTL is enforced based on the audience’s lifespan.Step 4: Activate audiences (to Experience Platform or a cloud destination) activate-audiences
Next, activate audiences to either your Experience Platform instance or a cloud destination.
Option A: Activate to Experience Platform
Complete the following steps outlined in the configure Adobe Experience Platform as a destination guide.
- Create a destination – Use the UI to set up an Experience Platform destination (sandbox-level).
- Map match keys – Select the identifier (e.g.,
hashedEmail). - Define TTL – Set expiration (1–30 days).
- Verify in Audience Portal – Once a collaborator sends you an audience, verify that it appears in the Audience Portal under the origin “Real-Time CDP Collaboration.”
Option B: Activate to cloud
To configure a cloud destination (for example, AWS S3 or Snowflake), contact your Adobe account representative to initiate the setup process. Depending on the cloud destination, you will need to provide cloud destination details such as file path, credentials, account locators etc. Once required information is provided, Adobe will configure the cloud destination setup.
Audience data sent to a cloud destination follows a predefined schema. For a detailed description of the required fields and format, download the Collaboration Audience Activation Guide.
Step 5: Set up measurement (optional) set-up-measurement
Collaboration offers a variety of reports to analyze campaign reach, frequency, and effectiveness. While the Measure workspace is available in the UI, full reporting functionality may require backend enablement.
To learn how to view and interpret measurement reports, see the Measurement guide. It covers attribution, campaign summary metrics, and dashboards such as reach curves and frequency distribution.
Step 6: Connect with collaborators connect-with-collaborators
With setup complete, your organization is now ready to connect with collaborators by sending or accepting invitations and submitting project settings for approval. This connection process involves sending or receiving invitations, reviewing and submitting connection settings (such as use cases and credit consumption), and confirming the connection.
As an advertiser, use the Connect workspace from the left navigation menu to browse available publishers. Alternatively, collaborators may connect with each other directly through private connection invitations.
For an overview of this flow, see the establishing connections guide. For a visual walkthrough of the connection process, including browsing collaborators and managing connection settings, watch the advertiser account setup video.
Next steps
You’ve now completed initial setup and configured your organization for secure collaboration. Next, explore the following resources to deepen your understanding of activation, measurement, and data governance: