Create your first journey jo-quick-start
Prerequisites start-prerequisites
In order to send messages with journeys, the following configurations are required:
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Configure an event: if you want to trigger your journeys unitarily when an event is received, you need to configure an event. You define the expected information and how to process it. This step is performed by a technical user. Read more.
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Create an audience: your journey can also listen to Adobe Experience Platform audiences in order to send messages in batch to a specified set of profiles. For this, you need to create audiences. Read more.
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Configure the data source: you can define a connection to a system to retrieve additional information that will be used in your journeys, for example in your conditions. A built-in Adobe Experience Platform data source is also configured at provisioning time. This step is not required if you only leverage data from the events in your journey. This step is performed by a technical user. Read more
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Configure an action: If you’re using a third-party system to send your messages, you can create a custom action. Learn more in this section. This step is performed by a technical user. If you’re using Journey Optimizer built-in message capabilities, you just need to add a channel action to your journey and design your content.
Access journeys journey-access
Key metrics & journeys’ list access-metrics
In the JOURNEY MANAGEMENT menu section, click Journeys. Two tabs are available:
Overview: this tab displays a dashboard with key metrics related to your journeys:
- Profiles processed: total number of profiles processed over the last 24 hours
- Live journeys: total number of live journeys with traffic over the last 24 hours. Live journeys include Unitary journeys (event-based) and Batch journeys (read audience).
- Error rate: ratio of all profiles in error compared with the total number of profiles who entered over the last 24 hours.
- Discard rate: ratio of all profiles discarded compared with the total number of profiles who entered over the last 24 hours. A discarded profile represents someone who is not eligible to enter the journey, for example because of an incorrect namespace or because of re-entrance rules.
Browse: this tab displays the list of existing journeys. You can search for journeys, use filters and perform basic actions on each element. For example, you can duplicate or delete an item. For more information, refer to this section.
Filter journeys filter
In the list of journeys, you can leverage various filters to refine the list of journeys for better readability.
Here are the various filtering operations that you can perform:
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Filter journeys according to their status, type, version and assigned tags from the Status and version filters.
The type can be: Unitary event, Audience qualification, Read audience, Business event or Burst.
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Use the Creation filters to filter journeys according to their creation date or the user who created them.
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Display journeys which use a specific event, field group or action from the Activity filters and Data filters.
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Use the Publication filters to select a publication date or a user. You can choose, for example, to display the latest versions of live journeys that were published yesterday.
To filter journeys based on a specific date range, select Custom from the Published drop-down list.
Additionally, in the Event, Data source and Action configuration panes, the Used in field displays the number of journeys that use that particular event, field group or action. You can click the View journeys button to display the list of corresponding journeys.
Build your journey jo-build
This step is performed by the business user. This is where you create your journeys. Combine the different event, orchestration and action activities to build your multi-step cross-channel scenarios.
Here are the main steps to send messages through journeys:
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From the Browse tab, click Create Journey to create a new journey.
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Edit the journey’s properties in the configuration pane displayed on the right side. Learn more in this section.
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Start by drag and dropping an event or a Read Audience activity from the palette into the canvas. To learn more about journey design, refer to this section.
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Drag and drop the next steps that the individual will follow. For example, you can add a condition followed by a channel action. To learn more about activities, refer to this section.
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Test your journey using test profiles. Learn more in this section
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Publish your journey to activate it. Learn more in this section.
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Monitor your journey using the dedicated reporting tools to measure your journey’s effectiveness. Learn more in this section.
Define your journey properties change-properties
Click on the pencil icon, next to the journey’s name, to access its properties.
You can change the name of the journey, add a description, allow re-entrance, choose start and end dates and, as an Admin user, define a Timeout and error duration. You can also assign Adobe Experience Platform Unified Tags to your journey. This allows you to easily classify them and improve search from the campaigns list. Learn how to work with tags
For live journeys, this screen displays the publication date and the name of the user who published the journey.
The Copy technical details allows you to copy technical information about the journey which the support team can use to troubleshoot. The following information is copied: JourneyVersion UID, OrgID, orgName, sandboxName, lastDeployedBy, lastDeployedAt.
Entrance and re-entrance entrance
By default, new journeys allow re-entrance. You can uncheck the Allow re-entrance option for “one shot” journeys, for example if you want to offer a one-time gift when a person enters a shop.
When the Allow re-entrance option is activated, the Re-entrance wait period field is displayed. This field allows you to define the time to wait before allowing a profile to enter the journey again in unitary journeys (starting with an event or an audience qualification). This prevents journeys from being erroneously triggered multiple times for the same event. By default the field is set to 5 minutes. The maximum duration is 29 days.
Learn more about profile entrance and re-entrance management, in this section.
Manage access manage-access
To assign custom or core data usage labels to the journey, click the Manage access button. Learn more on Object Level Access Control (OLA)
Journey and profile timezones timezone
Timezone is defined at journey level. You can enter a fixed time zone or use Adobe Experience Platform profiles to define the journey time zone. If a time zone is defined in Adobe Experience Platform profile, it can be retrieved in the journey.
For more information on timezone management, see this page.
Start and end dates dates
You can define a Start date. If you haven’t specified one, it will be automatically defined at publication time.
You can also add an End date. This allows profiles to exit automatically when the date is reached. If no end date is specified, profiles can stay until the global journey timeout (which is generally 30 days, and reduced to 7 days with Healthcare Shield add-on offering). The only exception is recurring read audience journeys with Force re-entrance on recurrence activated, which end at the start date of the next occurrence.
Timeout and error in journey activities timeout_and_error
When editing an action or condition activity, you can define an alternative path in case of error or timeout. If the processing of the activity interrogating a third-party system exceeds the timeout duration defined in the journey’s properties (Timeout and error field), the second path will be chosen to perform a potential fallback action.
Authorized values are between 1 and 30 seconds.
We recommend that you define a very short Timeout and error value if your journey is time sensitive (example: reacting to the real-time location of a person) because you cannot delay your action for more than a few seconds. If your journey is less time sensitive, you can use a longer value to give more time to the system called to send a valid response.
Journeys also uses a global timeout. See the next section.
Global journey timeout global_timeout
In addition to the timeout used in journey activities, there is also a global journey timeout which is not displayed in the interface and cannot be changed.
This global timeout stops the progress of individuals in the journey 30 days after they enter. This timeout is reduced to 7 days with Healthcare Shield add-on offering. This means that an individual’s journey cannot last longer than 30 days (or 7 days). After this timeout period, the individual’s data is deleted. Individuals still flowing in the journey at the end of the timeout period will be stopped and they will not be taken into account in reporting. You could therefore see more people entering the journey than exiting.
Due to the 30-day journey timeout, when journey re-entrance is not allowed, we cannot make sure the re-entrance blocking will work more than 30 days. Indeed, as we remove all information about persons who entered the journey 30 days after they enter, we cannot know the person entered previously, more than 30 days ago.
An individual can enter a wait activity only if he or she has enough time left in the journey to complete the wait duration before the 30 days journey timeout. See this page.
Duplicate a journey duplicate-a-journey
You can duplicate an existing journey from the Browse tab. All objects and settings are duplicated to the journey copy.
To perform this, follow the steps below:
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Navigate to the journey you want to copy, click the More actions icon (the three dots next to the journey name).
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Select Duplicate.
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Enter the name of the journey and confirm. You can also change the name in the journey properties screen. By default, the name is set as follows:
[JOURNEY-NAME]_copy
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The new journey is created and available in the journey list.