Learn how to create destinations and activate data in Adobe’s Real-Time Customer Data Platform. For more detailed product documentation, see activate profiles and segments to a destination, how to connect a destination and connect to streaming destinations and activate data with the API.
Hi everyone, this is Michelle. Join me to learn about connecting to destinations and activating data in the Realtime Customer Data Platform. Whether you’re an admin or a marketer practitioner, you need to understand the access controls associated with creating destinations and activating data to them. Destination administrators need full access, so managed destinations should be added to your user account. If there are others in your organization that create audiences and you want to give them the ability to send or activate those audiences to connected destinations, then you’d assign the Activate Destinations permission with or without the mapping step. Dataset exports are used for sending raw experience platform data to cloud storage for external analysis, reporting, and data science use cases. Profile exports are used for sending customer attributes for things like email marketing and audience targeting and suppression. The mapping step and dataset destination permissions are aligned with the destinations that fall into these categories. A connection to a destination must be configured before audiences or data can be sent. This is accomplished in three steps regardless of the destination. First, find the desired destination in the catalog. Next, depending on the current call to action shown on the destination card, you’ll either set up an initial instance of that destination or create another instance. We’ll see this in the user interface soon so you understand what this means. Third, supply the credentials required by the destination partner and authenticate them to verify the connection was made successfully. The credential inputs will be different across the destinations. We’ll also see examples of this. Okay, it’s time to move into the user interface. I’m in the product and I navigate it to destinations under connections. I’m currently on the catalog view. Let’s have a look at connecting to an Adobe application. On the Marketo engaged destination card, I’ll select the setup action. At the top, there are links that provide insight into the workflow steps used for this destination partner from the configuration all the way to activating audiences. Marketo engage includes workflow steps for governance, mapping, and schedule, but not all destination partners use them. What all destinations do have in common is the requirement to connect to the destination first. Now, once I enter the credentials, the connect to destination button activates. I choose this to verify the credentials work properly. I could even continue with activating audiences after this point using the navigation in the top right. Earlier I mentioned the second step in connecting to a destination depends on the current call to action shown on the destination card. Looking at the Amazon S3 destination, notice the call to action is activate. This means that a connection has already been made and you can proceed with sending data to it. However, you can also configure a new instance of this destination. In the three picker, choose configure new destination. Notice how the credentials differ from the Marketo credentials. It supports two authentication methods and an encryption key. Activating data is accessible in multiple areas of experience platform. We just saw an example of this in the destinations catalog. The destination cards have an activate call to action, so this is one way. Another way is to access the browse view in the destination section. This view shows only connected destinations, so all you need to do here is select activate audiences from the three picker next to the destination name. This method is organic to marketer practitioners who create audiences in the user interface. An activate to destination call to action appears in the upper right corner in the audience details view. Let’s go back to the user interface. This time I’m in the browse view in destinations. Again, this displays only connected destinations, so I don’t have to scroll through the entire catalog of destinations. Here’s a destination instance for Adobe Campaign. I’ll select activate audiences from the menu. Notice the workflow for this destination is different than the one we saw from Marketo. It doesn’t have the governance or mapping steps, but it does allow you to select attributes. I’ll select the first audience to show you the process. Here I can either accept the recommended profile attributes or select different ones. There’s options to modify the schedule or file name. This step lets me include or exclude additional profile attributes with the exported profiles. Then I can review the activation details before finalizing it. I’ll show you another way to activate audiences. Depending on the version of real-time CDP your company purchased, you’ll likely see customer audiences and potentially account audiences and prospect audiences, but not necessarily all of them. If you navigate to audiences under any of these categories, that opens the browse view of saved audiences for that type. From here, select the audience name. This displays the details about the audience and the ability to activate it to the destination up here. I hope this video provides you with the necessary information to connect to your own destinations and activate audiences in the real-time CDP. Thanks and good luck!