Pull from Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics provides useful intelligence about customer activity on Web sites and mobile devices. Marketers can analyze clickstream data to understand what their customers are doing in real-time, and then optimize customer experiences across brands.

SFTP is a common way to make data sources available to Amperity. For example: files are made available from a SFTP site and are frequently refreshed. Use a courier to connect to the SFTP site and pull the refreshed files to Amperity on a regular basis.

Note

When using SFTP as a data source, a sample file is often required to set up the initial feed and courier processes.

This topic describes the steps that are required to pull raw clickstream data to Amperity from Adobe Analytics:

  1. Get details

  2. About clickstream files

  3. Add data source

Get details

Adobe Analytics may be configured to send data to Amperity using SFTP, Amazon S3, or Azure Blob Storage as a staging step, from which Amperity is configured to pull data. This requires the following configuration details:

  1. The RSA public key to use for PGP encryption.

    This key must be downloaded from the Adobe Analytics console, and then sent to Amperity using SnapPass. A representative of Amperity will add the certificate to the SFTP location that is built into Amperity (<tenant>.sftp.amperity.com).

    Tip

    Amperity provides a built-in SFTP connector for Adobe Analytics with some pre-configured settings.

    You may configure Adobe Analytics to send data to Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage, after which you would use that data source to configure your connection to Adobe Analytics. The connection steps will change (from SFTP to Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage) and are outlined in those topics, but all other steps are the same as outlined in this topic.

  2. From the Adobe Anaytics admin console, configure an Adobe Analytics Data Feed . Specify the connection type as SFTP, port 22, the host name (<tenant>.sftp.amperity.com), and then the folder path to which that data is sent. For example: /tenant/.

  3. From the Adobe Analytics console, configure the contents of the data feed to contain a limited set of fields. (Clickstream data can contain hundreds or even thousands of fields. Many of these are not useful for workflows within Amperity).

    Trim the list of fields that are sent to Amperity.

    Ensure that an authentication key is present in the data, such as an ID login or cookie, that links to the internal ID system to ensure that data associated with customers is usable.

    Select only relevant events, as they relate to the authentication key, such as logins, purchases, and so on.

    Additional data attributes for product IDs, SKUs, categories, content types, and so on.

    Provide to Amperity a dictionary of configurable evar fields that are in use.

  4. A sample for each file to simplify feed creation.

    Note

    Files sent from Adobe Analytics use Gzip as the compression format and will contain multiple files.

Tip

Use SnapPass to securely share configuration details for Adobe Analytics between your company and your Amperity representative.

About clickstream files

Adobe Analytics can send data to the SFTP location that is built into Amperity. Adobe Analytics must be able to connect to this location, and then add files to the specified path.

When configured to run on a schedule, the output from Adobe Analytics is a compressed Gzip that contains multiple files. One of these files (hit_data.tsv) is the primary table and should be configured to run on a daily basis. All of the other files are static lookup tables for codes in the primary table.

Add data source and feed

Add a data source that pulls data from an Adobe Analytics bucket for each file that you want to pull to Amperity.

Browse the Adobe Analytics bucket to select a file, and then review the settings for that file. Define the feed schema, and then activate the feed. Run the courier manually, and then review the data that is added to the domain table that is associated with the feed.

To add a data source for any SFTP site

Step 1.

Open the Sources page to configure Adobe Analytics.

Click the Add courier button to open the Add courier dialog box.

Add

Select Adobe Analytics. Do one of the following:

  1. Click the row in which Adobe Analytics is located. Sources are listed alphabetically.

  2. Search for Adobe Analytics. Start typing “ado”. The list will filter to show only matching sources.

Step 2.

Credentials allow Amperity to connect to Adobe Analytics and must exist before a courier can be configured to pull data from Adobe Analytics. Select an existing credential from the Credential drop-down, and then click Continue.

Tip

A courier that has credentials that are configured correctly will show a “Connection successful” status, similar to:

Add
Step 3.

Select the file that will be pulled to Amperity, either directly (by going into the SFTP site and selecting it) or by providing a filename pattern.

Add

Click Browse to open the File browser. Select the file that will be pulled to Amperity, and then click Accept.

Use a filename pattern to define files that will be loaded on a recurring basis, but will have small changes to the filename over time, such as having a datestamp appended to the filename.

Note

For a new feed, this file is also used as the sample file that is used to define the schema. For an existing feed, this file must match the schema that has already been defined.

Add
Step 4.

Review the file.

Add

The contents of the file may be viewed as a table and in the raw format. Switch between these views using the Table and Raw buttons, and then click Refresh to view the file in that format.

Note

PGP encrypted files can be previewed. Apache Parquet PGP encrypted files must be less than 500 MB to be previewed.

Amperity will infer formatting details, and then adds these details to a series of settings located along the left side of the file view. File settings include:

  • Delimiter

  • Compression

  • Escape character

  • Quote character

  • Header row

Review the file, and then update these settings, if necessary.

Note

Amperity supports the following file types: Apache Avro, Apache Parquet, CSV, DSV, JSON, NDJSON, PSV, TSV, and XML.

Refer to those reference pages for details about each of the individual file formats.

Files that contain nested JSON (or “complex JSON”) or XML may require using the legacy courier configuration.

Step 5.

A feed defines the schema for a file that is loaded to Amperity, after which that data is loaded into a domain table and ready for use with workflows within Amperity.

There are two options for feeds: use a new feed or use an existing feed.

Use a new feed

To use a new feed, choose the Create new feed option, select an existing source from the Source drop-down or type the name of a new data source, and then enter the name of the feed.

Add

After you choose a load type and save the courier configuration, you will configure the feed using the data within the sample file.

Use an existing feed

To use an existing feed, choose the Use existing feed option to use an existing schema.

Add

This option requires this file to match all of the feed-specific settings, such as incoming field names, field types, and primary keys. The data within the file may be different.

Load types

The load type defines how data in the file will be loaded to the associated domain table.

Add

Use the Truncate and load option to delete all rows in the associated domain table prior to loading data.

Use the Load option to load data from the selected file to the associated domain table.

Note

When a file is loaded to a domain table using an existing file, the file that is loaded must have the same schema as the existing feed. The data in the file may be new.

Step 6.

Use the feed editor to do all of the following:

  • Set the primary key

  • Choose the field that best presents when the data in the table was last updated; if there is not an obvious choice, use the “Generate an updated field” option.

  • For each field in the incoming data, validate the field name and semantic tag columns in the feed. Make any necessary adjustments.

  • For tables that contain customer records, enable the “Make available to Stitch” to ensure the values in this data source are used for identity resolution.

When finished, click Activate.

Step 7.

Find the courier related to the feed that was just activated, and then run it manually.

On the Sources page, under Couriers, find the courier you want to run and then select Run from the actions menu.

Add

Select a date from the calendar picker that is before today, but after the date on which the file was added to the Adobe Analytics bucket.

Add

Leave the load options in the Run courier dialog box unselected, and then click Run.

After the courier has run successfully, inspect the domain table that contains the data that was loaded to Amperity. After you have verified that the data is correct, you may do any of the following:

  • If the data contains customer records, edit the feed and make that data available to Stitch.

  • If the data should be loaded to Amperity on a regular basis, add the courier to a courier group that runs on the desired schedule.

  • If the data will be a foundation for custom domain tables, use Spark SQL to build out that customization.

Workflow actions

A workflow will occasionally show an error that describes what prevented a workflow from completing successfully. These first appear as alerts in the notifications pane. The alert describes the error, and then links to the Workflows tab.

Open the Workflows page to review a list of workflow actions, choose an action to resolve the workflow error, and then follow the steps that are shown.

Step one.

You may receive a notifications error for a configured Adobe Analytics data source. This appears as an alert in the notifications pane on the Destinations tab.

Review a notifications error.

If you receive a notification error, review the details, and then click the View Workflow link to open this notification error in the Workflows page.

Step two.

On the Workflows page, review the individual steps to determine which step(s) have errors that require your attention, and then click Show Resolutions to review the list of workflow actions that were generated for this error.

The Workflow page, showing a workflow with errors.
Step three.

A list of individual workflow actions are shown. Review the list to identify which action you should take.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

Some workflow actions are common across workflows and will often be available, such as retrying a specific task within a workflow or restarting a workflow. These types of actions can often resolve an error.

In certain cases, actions are specific and are shown when certain conditions exist in your tenant. These types of actions typically must be resolved and may require steps that must be done upstream or downstream from your Amperity workflow.

Amperity provides a series of workflow actions that can help resolve specific issues that may arise with Adobe Analytics, including:

Step four.

Select a workflow action from the list of actions, and then review the steps for resolving that error.

Choose a workflow action from the list of actions.

After you have completed the steps in the workflow action, click Continue to rerun the workflow.

Bad archive

Sometimes the contents of an archive are corrupted and cannot be loaded to Amperity.

To resolve this error, do the following.

  1. Upload a new file to Amperity.

  2. After the file to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Invalid credentials

The credentials that are defined in Amperity are invalid.

To resolve this error, verify that the credentials required by this workflow are valid.

  1. Open the Credentials page.

  2. Review the details for the credentials used with this workflow. Update the credentials for Adobe Analytics if required.

  3. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Missing file

An archive that does not contain a file that is expected to be within an archive will return a workflow error; Amperity will be unable to complete the workflow until the issue is resolved.

To resolve this error, do the following.

  1. Add the required file to the archive.

    or

    Update the configuration for the courier that is attempting to load the missing file to not require that file.

  2. After the file is added to the archive or removed from the courier configuration, click Resolve to retry this workflow.

SFTP site unavailable

The SFTP site at [tenant].sftp.amperity.com is unavailable. This may be due to any of the following issues:

  • A configuration error within Amperity.

  • The SFTP server is unavailable or unresponsive.

  • The SFTP server does not have enough storage space.

  • Too many connection attempts were made to the SFTP server.

Note

Amperity will make multiple attempts to connect to an SFTP server before showing this workflow error.

To resolve this error, do any of the following.

  1. Verify the configuration for [tenant].sftp.amperity.com.

  2. Verify that the SFTP server is available and responsive.

  3. Verify the amount of storage space that is available on the SFTP server.

  4. Decrease the number of couriers in Amperity that are configured to connect to [tenant].sftp.amperity.com.

  5. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.

Unable to decompress archive

An archive that cannot be decompressed will return a workflow error; Amperity will be unable to complete the workflow until the issue is resolved.

This issue may be shown when the name of the archive doesn’t match the name of the configured archive or when Amperity is attempting to decompress a file (and not an archive). In some cases, the contents of the archive file may be the reason why Amperity is unable to decompress the archive.

To resolve this error, do the following.

  1. Verify the configuration for the archive, and then verify the contents of the archive.

    Update the configuration, if neccessary. For example, when Amperity is attempting to decompress a file, update the configuration to specify a file and not an archive.

    In some cases, re-loading the archive to the location from which Amperity is attempting to pull the archive is necessary.

  2. Return to the workflow action, and then click Resolve to retry this workflow.