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When to activate

By default, Adobe Experience Platform exports data to a destination whenever any change occurs to a profile: an attribute update, an audience qualification or disqualification, or an identity change. This can generate a large volume of exports, many of which carry no meaningful change for downstream systems.

With the When to activate feature, you get fine-grained control over which types of profile changes trigger exports for a given destination dataflow. You can enable or disable each trigger type independently. Disabling a trigger type suppresses exports caused only by that type of change.

Supported destination types supported-destinations

The When to activate feature is supported for the following destination types:

Activation trigger types trigger-types

The table below describes each trigger type. Triggers are listed in order of expected activation volume, from highest to lowest.

Default behavior default-behavior

All three trigger types are enabled on every new and existing dataflow. When you disable one or more triggers, exports caused by that trigger type are suppressed. Exports that result from a combination of trigger types still fire if at least one enabled trigger caused the change.

Best practices and recommendations best-practices

The best trigger configuration depends on your use case. Use the following guidance as a starting point.

Start with attribute changes for the largest volume reduction. Disabling the attribute changes trigger produces the most significant reduction in export volume for most organizations and addresses the most common source of unnecessary exports. For the underlying behavior, see what determines a data export for enterprise destinations and for streaming API-based destinations. The trigger fires whenever any mapped attribute is updated, including from daily batch ingestion that restates values that have not meaningfully changed.

For example, if you synchronize your CRM with Experience Platform on a daily basis, or you recompute a propensity or churn prediction score daily, most profiles are restated with values identical to the previous day. With attribute changes enabled, every one of those restatements triggers an export. Disabling the trigger suppresses these restatement-driven exports while preserving exports driven by audience qualification and identity events.

Keep segmentation changes enabled. Audience entry and exit events are typically the most meaningful signals for downstream systems such as CRMs and ad platforms. Most organizations keep this trigger enabled.

Use identity changes as a surgical fix for specific scenarios. Unlike attribute changes, disabling identity changes is not a broad volume-reduction lever, and you should apply it only in precise situations where new identities being added to a profile produce unwanted downstream activity.

A representative example is an email service provider (ESP) reacting to profile updates from Experience Platform: a known user logs in from a new device, which adds a new ECID to their identity graph, and you do not want that identity update alone to trigger an email or SMS. In this situation, disabling the identity changes trigger suppresses the unwanted export.

Each organization has different use cases, so different trigger combinations may apply. Contact your Adobe account manager or Customer Care for guidance tailored to your activation setup.

Configure When to activate configure

You can configure the When to activate settings in two places:

View trigger configuration in the Browse tab browse-tab

The Browse tab in the Destinations workspace shows an Activation trigger column. The column displays the triggers currently configured for each dataflow. Use this column to quickly review which profile change types activate each of your destination connections.