Creating a Supplemental Table from Documents

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.

With the method of data source creation via Content Library documents, you can build a data source in which the fields correspond directly to one or more response forms. You typically use such a data source as a response table connected to a form by rules.

Any form input fields and $text$ sequences found in the selected documents will be used as the basis for constructing your new data source.

To start creating your Supplemental Table:

  1. In the Navigation Pane, click Actions> Create View/Supplemental Table. (Not seeing this choice? Refer to the Side navigation bar changes topic.)
  2. Click Extract Fields from Documents.

Extracting fields from documents

To extract fields from the document:

  1. Select the documents to be scanned for Text Replacement Fields sequences and form fields.

    Tip: Hover over a file under Files and click next to the file to see its properties and a preview.

  2. Click to add the file, or files, you selected in step 1 to the Documents column.
  3. Click Next.
  4. Select which fields you want to exclude from the new table.

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

  5. Click Next.
  6. Review the field names, define additional fields as needed, and select the appropriate data type for each.

    Tip: If a duplicate field name is reported, click Back and select one of the duplicates to exclude.

  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.

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 the Select Key Fields page.

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 Finish.

    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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