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Create an Activation for File Storage Target

After you create a segment in Data 360, you can publish it to an activation target.

Required Editions

Available in: All Editions supported by Data 360. See Data 360 edition availability.
User Permissions Needed
To create an activation

One of these permission sets:

  • Data Cloud Architect
  • Data Cloud Activation Manager
  • Data Cloud Activation Specialist
  • Segments with over 10 million records and related attributes won't activate. This limit doesn't apply to segments with only direct attributes.
  • You can have a maximum of 1000 activations that use related attributes.

Create an Activation

  1. In Data 360, click Segments.
  2. Select the segment that you want to activate.
    The segment size is checked at the time of an activation. Activation time varies based on segment size and the data in related attributes.
  3. In Activations, click New.
  4. Select a file storage activation target (S3 (Legacy), Amazon S3, SFTP, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage).
  5. For Activation Membership, select an object, and click Continue.
    Tip
    Tip Use Activation Membership to add fields from different DMOs than your segment is built on to send to your activation target. For example, a Loyalty Cloud user creates a segment of top-tier customers from the Individual object so they can target their customers with a special promotion. In Loyalty Cloud though, each customer is identified by their Loyalty Program Member Id. So when creating an activation, the Loyalty Cloud user can add the Loyalty Program Member Id field to the segment by selecting the Loyalty Program Member DMO in Activation Membership. Now Loyalty Cloud can identify segment members by their Loyalty Member Program Id to target with the Loyalty Cloud promotion.
  6. (Optional) Select your contact points. The order of attributes in the activation doesn’t match the order in the CSV file output.
  7. When you map contact points, select an existing path or click Edit to add, reorder, or delete sources and change source types and priority for each contact point.
  8. Click Next.

Configure Activation Attributes

  1. To activate more attributes, click Add Attributes.
  2. Drag up to 100 additional attributes to the canvas. If you select different columns with similar information, all the unique combinations are added to the output.
    • Direct Attribute—Attributes of the Activation Membership DMO.
    • Related Attribute—Attributes from any object in the DMO if a path to that object from the Activated On object exists and all the relationships along that path are either 1:1 or N:1.
    • Calculated Insights—Add your Calculated Insights metrics to the activation, and apply dimension filters for more granular insights.
  3. To provide a unique attribute name in the output file, click the Edit icon.
    When you activate additional attributes, primary or foreign key fields aren’t available as an option because they aren’t exposed for activation. To see primary or foreign key fields during activation, create a formula field that copies those fields. The formula field is included as an additional attribute for activation. In the lakehouse, number data type fields are stored as decimals, not integers. Therefore in activation, the fields appear as decimals, except for primary keys.
  4. Save your changes.
  5. (Optional) For SFTP, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure activation targets, you can remove the default attribute that's included automatically based on the Activation Membership object chosen during activation creation. However, if you remove the primary key attribute of the activated entity, it’s added back to the activation output automatically.
    When activating to file storage targets:
    • Use the column headers to identify and match the corresponding column data at the destination. If an activation is run multiple times, the order of attributes or columns in the activated file is consistent.
      Note
      Note For activations created prior to January 2026, you must edit and save your activation to ensure its future runs have consistent order of attributes or columns.
    • If you edit an activation, the order of attributes or columns is reset in the activated file. However, the subsequent runs will have the same order of attributes or columns.
    • The Update Action field in the activation file in your file storage target corresponds to the Delta Type field in the Audience DMO Schema Attributes. Additionally, a Version field is added to the activation file by default, but it can be ignored.

(Optional) Refine the Audience

  1. To include campaign-specific data, expand Campaign Data, and click Add Campaign Attribute.
    You can include up to 20 standard attributes (Activation Name, Activation ID, Segment Name, Segment ID, Activation Run ID, and Activation Publish Start Time) and custom attributes. Each campaign attribute forms a new column in activation output.
    Note
    Note For a waterfall segment, when you include the Segment Name and Segment ID standard attributes, the activation output displays the parent segment name and ID.
    1. You can modify or remove campaign attributes when editing an activation. To remove all campaign attributes, choose the Delete All option from the Add Campaign Attribute dropdown menu.
    You can also manage campaign-specific data through the Activation Connect APIs.
  2. Expand Provisional Audience Limiting, then click Rank Attributes to use the same audience for multiple fixed-size campaigns across different channels with varying budgets.
    1. Drag up to three attributes to the canvas in your preferred hierarchy for ranking. You can rearrange the attributes by dragging them up or down.
    2. Select the sorting order (ascending or descending) for each attribute and the attribute path, then click Save.
    3. To remove an attribute, select the dropdown menu, then click Remove Attribute.
    To rank attributes, you can include direct attributes and calculated insights.
  3. To limit the audience for this activation, enter a number from 1 through 10,000. The audience is selected randomly. If you ranked attributes, the audience is prioritized based on the ranking. To extend the audience limit to a maximum of 1 million, contact Salesforce Customer Support.
  4. Click Next.

Save the Activation

  1. Enter a name and description for your activation.
    • Key qualifier attributes are added to activations automatically
    • Your description can have up to 200 characters
      Important
      Important Don’t include these characters in the name: + ! @ # $ % ^ * ( ) = { } [ ] \ . < > / " : ? | , _ &
  2. Choose a refresh type for the segment publish.
    A full refresh publishes all records in the segment. An incremental refresh publishes only the added, updated, and deleted records since the last successful refresh. You can exclude modified or deleted records from the payload if they’re not needed.
  3. Click Save.

Your segment publishes on the next publish scheduled for the selected activation target. These items are added to your file storage activation platform when the segment is activated:

  • Data files that contain the segment members with additional attributes.
    • For S3 (Legacy) targets, your data files are stored in a subfolder named Salesforce-c360-Segments which is automatically created when the first segment is activated.
  • A segment metadata JSON file in the same directory as your activated data files.
    • For S3(Legacy) and Amazon S3 targets, this metadata JSON file serves as a confirmation that the write operation to your destination is complete and the data is ready for consumption.
    • For SFTP, GCS, and Azure targets, the metadata file and the activated data files may arrive in any sequence. Hence, the presence of the metadata file doesn’t indicate that activation is complete. To check if the activation is complete, use the Get activation history connect API, or view the publish status in the Activation History section on the activation record home.

    The segment metadata JSON file includes:

    • Segment ID and name
    • Data space ID and name
    • Record count
    • Refresh ID and publish refresh type
    • Attribute names and their corresponding data types
Note
Note For the activated files that are generated in CSV format, the field values follow standard quoting rules where they are enclosed in double quotes:
  • If a field contains a comma or a new line character, the entire value is quoted. For example: value1,value2 → "value1,value2".
  • If a field contains double quotes, each quote is escaped with a backslash (\). For example: "value1","value2" → ""value1","value2""

See Also