Import externally created audiences in AEP via SFTP/DLZ/Cloud Storage

[BitunSenAEP]

Hello Team,

We have a requirement to import/load externally created audiences into AEP. We are familiar with the "Import Audience" feature provided in the UI and we have done this couple of times. Now, based on the volume of audiences and increased frequency of importing thaudience, we are thinking of options to see if importing/uploading the audiences (in CSV or JSON) from SFTP or Data Landing Zone (DLZ) is feasible or not. I could not find anything in the ExperienceLeague other than importing audience using UI.

Anyone of you knwo, if this is at all possible through regular dataflow from SFTP/DLZ ? 

Thanks a lot in advance for all the help I get from this forum.

Thanks,

Bitun

[jayakrishnaaparthasarathy]

Hi @BitunSenAEP  - Importing the external audience from "Import audience" feature and other sources like SFTP, Cloud Storage is totally vary. Import audience will directly create a audience list from the uploaded CSV file and available to utilize for downstream and further enrichment. However, importing the audience from external connection will not be performing as same as like what import audience will do. Also, it would be considering as a separate stand alone profiles and we may have to create audience from those ingestion. On the other hand, it is not possible to utilize any source connection to set up a import audience.

I have read a document long back saying that adobe is planning to have S3 connection for "Import Audience" feature where we can connect and have a incremental set up as you expected. So, just check with support team and see if you get any luck. 

Thank you,
Jayakrishnaa P.

[BitunSenAEP]

Thank you for your response @jayakrishnaaparthasarathy 

I have raised a support ticket as well. Waiting for their side of response. If I get any, I will keep this posted here as well.

One question - what is the purpose of the "Segment Definition" class? As per the experience league document, this class should be used if we are bringing in segment definitions from external systems into Adobe Experience Platform. The confusion is, if it is used to bring segment definition only, then why it contains IdentityMap to capture individuals who are qualified for the segment.

Any explanation will really help. 

[supratim320]

UPS segmentDefinition schema keeps the versions of all audiences. And the identityMap is used to store the audience id (you can query the underlying table).

The association between an audience and profile is set up in the profile snapshot schema. There you will find 'segmentMembership' column which will tell the audiences a profile is part of.

So in essence, if audience has to be built from S3, I think the flow will look as:

1. Create the audience entity
2. Create the entry in Segment Ingestion Dataset
3. Create the profiles
4. Set up the association between profile and audience id in profile snapshot schema

** not sure if step 1 is required

Hope this clarifies your doubt

[jayakrishnaaparthasarathy]

@BitunSenAEP  - To be honest, we haven't used this segment definition class to bring the external audience. Again as mentioned, even though you use this segment definition class to bring all your audience along with other respective attributes still you might need to create a audience based on this schema. As we are not seeing anywhere that it would create an audience list based on the audience ID we will give while ingest externally. 

Regarding identity map, we always need a primary identity for every profile fragment to distinguish the audience or profile, in this case it would consider as audience ID. Seems it is same as like import audience option where you will select one column as a primary identity.

Thank you,
Jayakrishnaa P.

[kautuk_sahni]

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