Adobe Analytics source connector for report-suite data

Adobe Experience Platform allows you to ingest Adobe Analytics data through the Analytics source connector. The Analytics source connector streams data collected by Analytics to Platform in real-time, converting SCDS-formatted Analytics data into Experience Data Model (XDM) fields for consumption by Platform.

This document provides an overview of Analytics and describes the use-cases for Analytics data.

Adobe Analytics and Analytics data

Analytics is a powerful engine that helps you learn more about your customers, how they interact with your web properties, see where your digital marketing spend is effective, and identify areas of improvement. Analytics handles trillions of web-transactions per year and the Analytics source connector allows you to easily tap into this rich behavioral data and enrich the Real-Time Customer Profile in a matter of minutes.

At a high level, Analytics collects data from various digital channels and multiple data centers around the world. Once the data is collected, Visitor Identification, Segmentation and Transformation Architecture (VISTA) rules, and processing rules are applied to shape the incoming data. After raw data has gone through this lightweight processing, it is then considered ready for consumption by Real-Time Customer Profile. In a process parallel to the aforementioned, the same processed data is micro-batched and ingested into Platform datasets for consumption by Query Service, and other data-discovery applications.

See the processing rules overview for more information on processing rules.

Experience Data Model (XDM)

XDM is a publicly documented specification that provides common structures and definitions for an application to use to communicate with services on Experience Platform.

Adhering to XDM standards allows data to be uniformly incorporated, making it easier to deliver data and gather information.

To learn more about XDM, please see the XDM System overview.

How are fields mapped from Adobe Analytics to XDM?

When a source connection is established for bringing Analytics data into Experience Platform using the Platform user interface, data fields are automatically mapped and ingested into Real-Time Customer Profile within minutes. For instructions on creating a source connection with Analytics using the Platform UI, see the Analytics source connector tutorial.

For detailed information on the field mapping that occurs between Analytics and Experience Platform, see the Adobe Analytics field mapping guide.

What is the expected latency for Analytics Data on Platform?

The expected latency for Analytics Data on Platform is outlined in the table below. Latency will vary depending on customer configuration, data volumes, and consumer applications. For example, if the Analytics implementation is configured with A4T the latency to Pipeline will increase to 5-10 minutes.

For more information about Customer Journey Analytics latencies, see: Customer Journey Analytics Guardrails.

The Analytics backfill for production sandboxes defaults to 13 months. For Analytics data in non-production sandboxes, backfill is set to three months. The limit of 10 billion events mentioned in the table above is strictly with respect to expected latency.

When you create an Analytics source dataflow in a production sandbox, two dataflows are created:

• A dataflow that does a 13-month backfill of historical report suite data into data lake. This dataflow ends when the backfill is complete.
• A dataflow flow which sends live data to data lake and to Real-Time Customer Profile. This dataflow runs continuously.

Primary identifiers in Analytics data

Every hit from the Analytics source connector contains a primary identifier that is dependant on whether an ECID or an AAID exists. If there is an ECID, the ECID is designated as the primary identifier. If there is an AAID, then the AAID is designated as the primary.

The following table provides more information on identity fields in your Analytics data.

How the Analytics source treats identities

The Analytics source passes these identities to Experience Platform in XDM form as:

• endUserIDs._experience.aaid.id
• endUserIDs._experience.mcid.id
• endUserIDs._experience.aacustomid.id

These fields are not marked as identities. Instead, the same identities (if present in the event) are copied into XDM’s identityMap as key-value pairs:

• { "key": "AAID", "value": [ { "id": "<identity>", "primary": <true or false> } ] }
• { "key": "ECID", "value": [ { "id": "<identity>", "primary": <true or false> } ] }
• { "key": "AACUSTOMID", "value": [ { "id": "<identity>", "primary": false } ] }

When the identity or identities are copied into identityMap, endUserIDs._experience.mcid.namespace.code is also set on the same event:

• If AAID is present, endUserIDs._experience.aaid.namespace.code is set to “AAID”.
• If ECID is present, endUserIDs._experience.mcid.namespace.code is set to “ECID”.
• If AACUSTOMID is present, endUserIDs._experience.aacustomid.namespace.code is set to “AACUSTOMID”.

In the identity map, if ECID is present, it is marked as the primary identity for the event. In this case, AAID may be based on ECID due to the Identity Service grace period. Otherwise, AAID is marked as the primary identity for the event. AACUSTOMID is never marked as the Primary ID for the event. However, if AACUSTOMID is present, then AAID is based on AACUSTOMID due to the Experience Cloud order of operations.