Creating Profile Extension Tables

Profile ExtensionsClosed Profile Extensions are tables used to store additional attributes that define behavioral, demographic or profile preference characteristics of your contacts. Profile Extensions holds aggregated data, and there’s a one-to-one relationship for a recipient between it and the Profile table. (PETs) give you a way to store additional attributes that define behavioral, demographic or profile preference characteristics of your contacts. Doing this helps you organize information about your contacts in a way that is most efficient for your queries and data imports.

Tip: For new accounts provisioned after 19A, system administrators can choose to have a predefined set of assets (a profile list, PETs, and supplemental tables) automatically included in the account, based on an industry vertical. For more information, see Preloaded Data Assets.

Unlike a supplemental table, which stores unaggregated information about recipients (John Doe has multiple browses or had made multiple purchases), a profile extension holds aggregated data. There’s a one-to-one relationship for a recipient between it and the main table.

For example, if you want a contact’s purchase information, the supplemental table includes data for every purchase, while a profile extension might hold only the name of the most recent item, or roll up of purchase data, for example, last purchase date, last purchase amount and Customer Lifetime purchase amount for a customer.

This permits filtering on a profile extension, something not possible with a supplemental table.

Aggregated data for browse, abandon and purchase behaviors is now available in the Recency area of the Filter Designer. These filters are also accessible in Program. For more information about this process, see Understanding Connect.

In SMS campaigns, you can use profile extension tables for targeting but not for personalization.

For Mobile App campaigns, you can create a PET for the App channel list. If your app includes a preferences section where you collect notification preferences from users, you can declare these preferences in the Responsys Mobile App SDK. The SDK will capture this information and it will be loaded as part of regular Connect job. To load the Notification Preferences to the App channel list’s PET, select the PET when configuring the app. For more information about selecting a Preferences PET, see Managing Mobile App Configurations.

For Web Push campaigns, you can create a PET for the Web Push channel list. For more information about the Web Push channel list, see Creating a Web Push channel list.

Creating a PET

Before you begin:

  • The system allows a maximum of 40 PETs for a specific list and a maximum number of 20 attributes per PET. You can use up to three Profile Extensions in a single filter.
  • The Filter Designer does not support profile extension table fields of Maximum Text Field (to 4000 chars*) data type. For more information about the Filter Designer, see Designing Filters.

To create a PET, App channel list PET, or Web Push channel list PET:

  1. Click The Lists icon Data on the side navigation bar, and select Profile Lists. (Not seeing this choice? Refer to the Side navigation bar changes topic.)
  2. Select the Profile Extensions tab.
  3. Click Create Profile Extension.

    The Create Profile Extension dialog opens.

  4. If an App channel list or Web Push channel list exists for the list, select whether to create the PET for the List, App Channel List, or Web Push Channel List.
  5. Upload your PET using one of two options:
    1. Click Upload a File.

      The Inbound Source section opens.

    2. Click Choose File to select the file to upload, select the file, and select the File character set.

      Note: If your file contains emojis, you will need to select Unicode (UTF-8) as your character set.

    3. Click Next.

      The File Handling section opens.

    4. Preview the file specifications.

      Note: If your file contains emojis, they may not display correctly in the File Preview. However, the emojis will display correctly in the data viewer once the file has been successfully uploaded.

    5. Click Next.

      The Table Fields section opens.

    6. Map the Incoming Fields to the appropriate Data Type.

      Tip: It's best practice to use the Text, Number, or Integer field specific to the field content. For example, numerical field names should use Number or Integer as opposed to text fields to improve query performance.

    7. Click Next.

      The Record Handling section opens.

    8. Configure the Record Handling for the file:
      • Select the format for dates that are uploaded in your file,
      • Configure how Responsys should match new records to existing records.
    9. Click Next.

      The Create Data Source section opens.

    10. Select folder, enter a name, and set an expiration date.

      Note: When creating a Profile Extension Table (PET), you can now set an expiration date. If you set an expiration date for a table, the default is 90 days unless you specify another date. By default, all tables never expire.

    11. Click Next to finish.
    1. Click Specify Fields.

      The Create Table dialog.

    2. Add the Field Names and select Data Types for each field.

      Tip: It's best practice to use the Text, Number or Integer field specific to the field content. Example: numerical field names should use Number or Integer as opposed to text fields to improve query performance.

    3. Continue adding fields as needed. If your table requires more than 20 fields, click the Add more fields link.
    4. Click Next.
    5. Select the folder, enter the name for the new data source, and set an expiration date.

      Note: When creating a Profile Extension Table (PET), you can now set an expiration date. If you set an expiration date for a table, the default is 90 days unless you specify another date. By default, all tables never expire.

    6. Click Create to finish.

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