Creating a Supplemental Table with a Delimited-Text File

A Supplemental Table stores relevant information for each record that can be drawn on for personalization of the campaign message or form document. One or more supplemental data sources can be combined with a distribution list using data extraction fields. Unlike a Profile Extension Table (PET), which stores aggregated data, a Supplemental Table holds unaggregated data. For example, John Doe performed multiple browses or made multiple purchases.

By default, Oracle Responsys allows 250 Supplemental Tables per account. Set an expiration date for Supplemental Tables that you only need temporarily.

To start creating your Supplemental Table:

  1. In the Navigation Pane, click An image of the Actions icon Actions> Create View/Supplemental Table. (Not seeing this choice? Refer to the Side navigation bar changes topic.)
  2. Click Upload Delimited Text File.

Importing the delimited text file

To import a delimited text file:

  1. Click Choose File to select the file (typically with a .tab, .csv, or .txt extension) you want to import.
  2. If applicable, confirm the character set of the file to be uploaded.

    Note: The import job must be configured with the character set of the file you are uploading so that Responsys can correctly read the data in the uploaded file. If your file contains emojis, you will need to select Unicode (UTF-8) as your character set.

  3. Click Next.

    Note: If the file is large, the next page might not appear for a few moments after you click Next.

  4. Confirm the file's characteristics:

    Tip: To help you with selecting the file's characteristics, the page displays a preview of the initial portion of the uploaded file. 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.

    • The character (typically a tab or comma) that divides the fields (columns) in the file to be uploaded.
    • Whether text columns are enclosed in single or double quotation marks.
    • Whether the first line contains field (column) names, or the file starts with a data record.
    • The date format for the data import.
  5. Click Next.
  6. Set the corresponding data types for each field. See Data types and field names for more information.

    Note: Field names that start with an illegal character will be prefixed with a lowercase "c", illegal characters will be stripped from field names, and long field names will be shortened to 30 characters. For example, **Field-Name#3 will become cFieldName#3. If these changes result in duplicate field names, you will have to rename one or more fields yourself to make them unique.

  7. Click Next.

Defining the Primary Key

A primary key uniquely identifies a record in your table. If your supplemental table, for example, stores information on recipient purchases, a recipient's email address could be used as primary key to identify each purchase as belonging to that recipient. Or if, for example, your Supplemental Table stores a product catalog, the product SKU number or product ID could be used as the primary key to identify products.

To define the Primary Key:

  1. Select fields in the Available Fields list and use the right arrow to move them to the Primary Key Fields list. Use the left arrow to remove them from the list.

    Tip: When you create a supplemental table to be used for personalization, you must define a primary key constructed from columns in the table. This allows for more efficient loading and updating of the personalization data from the supplemental table into memory.

  2. Click Next.

Selecting Key Fields

In Responsys, a data extraction key can be used either as a foreign key between a Supplemental Table and a campaign's or form's profile table (for personalization of the campaign or form), or as a match key used by a form submission's merge into a given Supplemental Table (for storing form submission data into a supplemental table).

To select key fields for data extraction:

  1. Select up to 4 data extraction fields.

    Tip: Hold Shift while selecting fields to select multiple fields for data extraction.

  2. Click Next.

Creating the data source

To create the data source:

  1. Select the folder where the Supplemental Table will be stored.

    Tip: Typically, you collect all the data sources for a campaign in a single folder, although this is not a requirement.

  2. Name your Supplemental Table using only the listed characters, or replace an existing Supplemental Table with your new one (only data sources in the selected folder are listed.).
  3. Choose an expiration date, or have your Supplemental Table never expire.

    Note: When creating a Supplemental Table, 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.

  4. Click Create.

You'll be redirected to Folders where you'll now be able to find your Supplemental Table. You'll still be able to modify your Supplemental Table from within in the Folders list.

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