Is “Trigger after batch audience evaluation” really working as expected for the first journey run? | Community
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ExeK
Level 2
July 30, 2026

Is “Trigger after batch audience evaluation” really working as expected for the first journey run?

  • July 30, 2026
  • 7 replies
  • 77 views

Hi everyone,

We are trying to better understand the actual behavior of the “Trigger after batch audience evaluation” option in AJO, because in our case it does not seem to behave the way the documentation and UI tooltip suggest.

From what we have observed, if the first run of a daily journey happens before the export job for that day is available, the journey ends up using the previous day’s snapshot instead of waiting for the current day’s audience evaluation/export to complete. After that, each subsequent run appears to keep following the same pattern, since it only checks whether a newer snapshot is available compared to the one used in the previous execution.

That makes us wonder whether this feature is really behaving as expected. In practice, it seems that if the first run happens too early, the journey can stay one day behind indefinitely, which makes the configuration much less useful for daily journeys than we would expect.

The behavior we are expecting is that the journey should wait for the current day’s batch evaluation/export to complete before running, at least for the first execution of the day. Otherwise, journeys scheduled before the export job finishes will always run with stale data.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Is this working as designed, or could this be considered a product issue or gap?

    7 replies

    SatheeskannaK
    Community Advisor
    SatheeskannaKCommunity Advisor
    Community Advisor
    July 30, 2026

    Hi ​@ExeK , This is what is supposed to happen, for example. 

    • AEP Daily Batch Segment: Scheduled evaluation to start at 1:00 AM every morning.
    • AJO Journey Launch: Scheduled for 4:00 AM every morning.
    • Trigger after batch evaluation: Configured to wait up to 1 hours for a fresh audience.
    • Day 1: On Monday, everything runs normally. But on Tuesday, the AEP batch segment job suffers a system delay and doesn't finish until 6:00 AM.
      • 4:00 AM: The journey wakes up and looks for an audience snapshot. Tuesday's audience data is missing.
      • 4:00 AM – 5:00 AM: The journey waits for 1 hour. Tuesday's data still does not arrive.
      • Result: It will skip for Tuesday’s run.
      • 6:00 AM: Tuesday's delayed batch segment finally finishes and sits in the database, untouched.
    • Day 2 (Wednesday): On Wednesday, the AEP batch segment job goes back to normal and finishes perfectly on time at 3:00 AM.
      • 4:00 AM: When the journey wakes up at 4 AM, it checks for a fresh audience, meaning an audience newer than the one used in the previous journey execution.
      • Recent audience check: The system looks at the fresh audience which is based on Wednesday's audience data (from 3:00 AM today) not the Tuesday's audience data (from 6:00 AM yesterday)
    • The Onward Pattern
      • On Thursday: The journey will continue as usual, using the audience data available on that day if the evaluation completes on time or before 5AM. Otherwise it will skip that day.
      • On Friday: The pattern is the same as on Thursday.

    If you believe this isn’t happening, then it’s a problem.

     

    Thanks, Sathees
      E
      ExeKAuthor
      Level 2
      July 31, 2026

      Hi ​@SatheeskannaK ,

      Thanks for your answer, you are right: in that case, when the AJO journey launch is scheduled after the daily batch segment job finishes, the configuration works as expected.

      However, have you ever considered what should happen if the journey is scheduled to run at 10:00 AM and the segmentation job usually finishes around 11:30 AM?

      1. At 10:00 AM, the journey is scheduled to wake up and check whether it can run.

      2. The updated audience for that day is not ready yet, because the segment evaluation finishes at 10:30 AM and the export job at 11:30 AM.

      3. First run: since the new snapshot is not available yet, instead of waiting for that day’s evaluation to complete, the journey uses the previous day’s snapshot. That is where appears a one-day offset.

      4. Subsequent runs: when the journey wakes up again, it finds a snapshot newer than the one used in the previous execution, so it runs at 10 AM with that newer audience version.

      5. Practical result: Instead of running with the same day’s audience at 11:30 AM, the journey uses stale data every day, running at 10:00 AM with an audience evaluation that is one day behind.

      We have also validated this behavior across several different journey cases, and we are seeing the same pattern in each of them.

       

       

      SatheeskannaK
      Community Advisor
      SatheeskannaKCommunity Advisor
      Community Advisor
      July 31, 2026

      ​@ExeK 

      • In this case, the Journey is scheduled to run at 10am, but the export job finishes at 11:30am.
      • Assuming you set up the "trigger after batch evaluation" timing to 1 hour, the journey will wait until 11am for the export job to finish.
      • Since the export job completed at 11:30am should skip the run for that day.
      • On the next day, if the export job finishes on time (max 11am), the journey will use the latest audience data instead of yesterday's data.

      If this does not happen, it is a problem that requires opening a ticket with Adobe support.

       

      Thanks, Sathees
      E
      ExeKAuthor
      Level 2
      July 31, 2026

      Sorry, I forgot to mention that the entire case was considered with a 2-hour waiting window configured for “Trigger after batch audience evaluation.”

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