Pull from Cheetah Digital

Cheetah Digital is a customer engagement platform that helps marketers deliver personalized experiences, create effective cross-channel messaging, and increase customer loyalty.

This topic describes the steps that are required to pull files in any supported format to Amperity from Cheetah Digital:

  1. Get details

  2. Add data source

Get details

Configure Cheetah Digital to use SFTP :

Detail one.

For an FTP Profile: a username and password is required, along with the remote folder to which Amperity will send data.

Note

The hostname for the SFTP server in Cheetah Digital is a combination of two values: the FTP URL, as configured for the FTP Profile and your Cheetah Digital username, separated by ” - ” (space, hyphen, space). For example: “sftp://acme - justinc”.

Add data source and feed

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

Browse the Cheetah Digital 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 an SFTP site

Step 1.

Open the Sources page to configure Cheetah Digital.

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

Add

Select Cheetah Digital. Do one of the following:

  1. Click the row in which Cheetah Digital is located. Sources are listed alphabetically.

  2. Search for Cheetah Digital. Start typing “sftp”. The list will filter to show only matching sources.

Step 2.

Credentials allow Amperity to connect to Cheetah Digital and must exist before a courier can be configured to pull data from Cheetah Digital. 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 Cheetah Digital 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.