Mastering External Events in SAS Customer Intelligence 360

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External Events in SAS CI360 might seem like a simple concept, yet many users don't fully grasp their potential. So let’s fix that! In this post, I’ll help you understand External Events better - without making your head spin.

If you're hearing about External Events for the first time (or just ignored them until now), check out this course my colleagues set up. It covers the basics without making you feel like you need a PhD in data science. Just remember to log in with your SAS Profile!

SAS Customer Intelligence Learning Subscription > Course: SAS Customer Intelligence 360 Fundamentals > Lesson 3: Events and Data Views

The Basics

An External Event is just a fancy way of saying, "Something happened outside of SAS CI360, but we still want to know about it."

Example Use Case

Imagine your CRM team wants to trigger a Real-Time Customer Journey in SAS CI360 whenever a customer calls, all excited about your brand-new product. You can define an External Event called incoming_call and track details like:

call_reason ("Why are you calling us?")
product_name ("What shiny new thing caught your eye?")
product_id ("Which exact version are we talking about?")

Once this event lands in SAS CI360, it's game on! You can:

Trigger a task (like sending a follow-up push notification).
Track engagement (because data is power!).

When to not use External Events

One question I hear a lot: "Can I send an External Event from my Mobile App or Website?"
The technical answer: Yes. The logical answer: Why would you do that to yourself? You can use Custom Events.
For Mobile Apps, just use the SAS CI360 Mobile SDK (because it's built for this). For Websites, the SAS CI360 JavaScript Tag will do the job effortlessly. Why reinvent the wheel when you have a perfectly good one?

A bit above the basics

Now that you’re convinced External Events are cool, let’s talk about how to send them.
There are two different ways you can send External Events to SAS CI360.

Real Time (one event at a time)

Need to stream single events into SAS CI360 as they happen? This is your jam. It’s perfect for:

Streaming events from SAS Event Stream Processing (ESP).
Capturing responses from SAS Real-Time Decision Manager (RTDM) or SAS Intelligent Decisioning.
Tracking events from your e-commerce system about the customer's shopping actions.

Throughput Limit: The External API Gateway will let you send 150 transactions per second (which is pretty speedy).

Batch Load (Mutiple rows, but same event definition)

Want to upload a ton of event data at once? The Batch API is here to save the day. Use it for:

Retail vendors sending a list of transactions from the past three days.
Bulk updates from external CRM or loyalty programs.

Throughput Limit:

You can make up to two batch requests every 30 seconds.
SAS CI360 processes a max of 1,000 events per second per tenant.
Uploading multiple files simultaneously won’t make things faster (sorry, nice try!).

You can learn more about the APIs for both Real Time and Batch here.

SAS CI360's Built-In External Event Integrations

Yes! SAS CI360 already plays nice with some out-of-the-box integrations:

SAS Event Stream Processing (ESP)
- Define the External Event in SAS CI360.
- Configure the ESP Access Point in SAS CI360.
- Map ESP attributes to the External Event.
SAS Real-Time Decision Manager (RTDM)
- External Events help capture RTDM Decision Flow outputs.

FAQs!

Can I use datahub_id as Identity when firing External Event?
Yes, you can use datahub_id.
When I send one of these identity types: subject_id, customer_id or login_id, and if the value is not present in SAS CI360 already what happens?
If the identity value that you sent is a new one, for the mentioned identity types, we create that identity in SAS CI360 and assign it a new datahub_id.
I get this error, "userMessage": "Missing identity value or identity type. Check required fields are present.", what should I do?
The Access Point you used to generate the authentication token does not have the Identity Type you are using in the paylod associated with it. That means, in the UI of SAS CI360 > General Setting > Access Point, if you have associated only customer_id and subject_id you can only send one of them in the payload of the External Event; only exception to this is datahub_id, as there is no need to associate it.