What's New in the 20.10 Release of CI360

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This release of SAS Customer Intelligence 360 includes the following new features and enhancements.

Configure Dependencies for Custom Properties across Property Groups

When you define custom properties, you can set up value dependencies so that the values in one custom property depend on the values for another property. For example, you might have a custom property named “City” with values that depend on the values that the user selects in a parent property named “State”.

Now, you can set up these dependencies even when the dependent properties are in different property groups. In the preceding example, the custom property “State” might be in custom property group 1, and the custom property “City” might be in custom property group 2.

This feature gives you additional flexibility when configuring dependencies across custom property definitions.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Plan)

Use Folders to Organize Items

Administrators can enable the use of folders for your organization on the General Settings -> Global -> Folders page. After folders are enabled, users can create folders and subfolders to organize items.

Items can be easily moved between folders and subfolders. Users can choose to display only items that are in the selected folders or items that are in the selected folders and any subfolders.

The use of folders is supported for these items: activities, creatives, data views, events, messages, segments and segment maps, spots, and tasks.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Discover)

Specify a Date Value for Dynamic Cascading Prompts for Process Nodes

A new date option enables you to specify a value for a day when you define dynamic cascading prompts for Process nodes in segment maps. This new option sends date-driven prompts from an on-premises data source and responds to queries for downstream prompts that depend on the date that was selected in the prompt.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Select Which Event Occurrence and Attribute Value to Match

You can change the event occurrence and attribute value that is used when evaluating a task’s target audience and the rule-based distribution criteria of the task’s creatives. By default, the system uses the first event occurrence and its associated attribute value when evaluating these items:

• which creatives to display when the creatives contain criteria that is used for rule-based distribution
• the members of the target audience

You can change the behavior by selecting the Only target users whose most recent event attribute values meet the criteria option for the event that you added to your criteria. When this option is selected in targeting criteria, only the most recent event occurrence with matching attributes is considered as criteria for inclusion in the target audience. When this option is selected in a creative’s rule-based distribution criteria, only the most recent event occurrence with matching attributes is considered as criteria for displaying a creative.

Note: This option is not available for every task type.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Last Published User ID Is Available in the Process Node Macro Variables Table

In a Process node in a segment map, the Last Published user ID is sent to the macro variables table when the execution is scheduled. For executions and count update operations that are being performed manually, the ID of the user performing the action is sent to the table.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

New Data Tables Are Available in Schema Version 6

If you have a license for SAS 360 Engage, you can use schema version 6 to download new and existing tables with additional columns. Two new category values, CDM and OPTOUTDATA, are also available to support downloading this new data.

Schema version 6 contains 19 new tables as part of SAS 360 Engage.

There are 12 new metadata cross-tables. The tables can help you understand relationships between published items, such as which creatives are part of a task. These non-partitioned tables can be retrieved using any category for SAS 360 Engage. Here are the tables:

• MD_ACTIVITY_X_ACTIVITY_NODE
• MD_CREATIVE_X_ASSET
• MD_DATAVIEW_X_EVENT
• MD_MESSAGE_X_CREATIVE
• MD_SEGMENT_MAP_X_SEGMENT
• MD_SEGMENT_X_EVENT
• MD_TASK_X_CREATIVE
• MD_TASK_X_DATAVIEW
• MD_TASK_X_EVENT
• MD_TASK_X_MESSAGE
• MD_TASK_X_SEGMENT
• MD_TASK_X_SPOT

There are six new metadata tables that contain information about published items. The tables can be retrieved using any category for SAS 360 Engage. Here is a list of the tables:

• MD_ACTIVITY_ABTESTPATH: metadata about an A/B test in an activity
• MD_ACTIVITY_NODE: metadata about the node in an activity
• MD_ASSET: metadata about an asset
• MD_BUSINESS_CONTEXT: metadata about a user-defined business context
• MD_OCCURRENCE: metadata about the execution history for a task or segment map that runs on a schedule or through the Run now feature
• MD_RTC: metadata about response tracking codes (RTCs)

There is one new partitioned event table called EMAIL_OPTOUT_DETAILS. The table captures the email event that caused an opt-out, along with the email address and program information. The table can be retrieved only by using category value = OPTOUTDATA.

In addition to the new tables, the business_context_id and folder_path_nm columns are added to these metadata tables:

• MD_ACTIVITY
• MD_CREATIVE
• MD_MESSAGE
• MD_SEGMENT
• MD_SEGMENT_MAP
• MD_TASK

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Common Data Model (CDM)

With this release, users of SAS 360 Engage have access to a new feature called the Common Data Model (CDM). CDM is an on-premises operational data model that stores contact and response history and the corresponding metadata.

A primary benefit of using CDM is that this data is a repository for contacts and responses that SAS 360 Engage: Direct uses to build segment criteria. The contacts and responses that are available in CDM are for known customers (users that have a subject ID that is known to SAS Customer Intelligence 360).

You can download the set of 30 new CDM tables through the REST API or with the download client on GitHub. After the tables are downloaded, the CDM loader program on GitHub enables you to import the downloaded data into an on-premises database.

Note: A program that facilitates loading the downloaded data into an on-premises data model is planned to be released in the future. With this program, DDLs are provided for all of the various database technologies that can be used by SAS 360 Engage: Direct.

Here are the supported databases:

• Oracle
• Teradata
• SQL Server
• Redshift
• Postgres
• SAP Hana
• DB2
• Greenplum
• Google BigQuery
• Snowflake

Here is a list of the tables that are introduced with CDM:

• Partitioned tables:
  • CDM_CONTACT_HISTORY
  • CDM_DYN_CONTENT_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_RESPONSE_EXTENDED_ATTR
  • CDM_RESPONSE_HISTORY
• Non-partitioned tables:
  • CDM_ACTIVITY_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_ACTIVITY_DETAIL
  • CDM_ACTIVITY_X_TASK
  • CDM_BUSINESS_CONTEXT
  • CDM_CAMPAIGN_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_CAMPAIGN_DETAIL
  • CDM_CONTACT_CHANNEL
  • CDM_CONTACT_STATUS
  • CDM_CONTENT_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_CONTENT_DETAIL
  • CDM_IDENTIFIER_TYPE
  • CDM_IDENTITY_ATTR
  • CDM_IDENTITY_MAP
  • CDM_IDENTITY_TYPE
  • CDM_OCCURRENCE_DETAIL
  • CDM_RESPONSE_CHANNEL
  • CDM_RESPONSE_LOOKUP
  • CDM_RESPONSE_TYPE
  • CDM_RTC_DETAIL
  • CDM_RTC_X_CONTENT
  • CDM_SEGMENT_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_SEGMENT_DETAIL
  • CDM_SEGMENT_MAP
  • CDM_SEGMENT_MAP_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_TASK_CUSTOM_ATTR
  • CDM_TASK_DETAIL

By default, CDM data is not enabled. If you are interested in generating CDM tables so that you can start downloading them, contact your SAS representative.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Email, and SAS 360 Engage: Direct)

Create Element Groups in the Email Layout Manager

Email designers can now construct element groups in order to combine various design elements into a single, reusable set that can be saved and repurposed across many email tasks. To use this new feature, you drag an Element Group element into the layout. Then, you can add any combination of these elements into the element group:

• Text
• Image
• Button
• Horizontal Line
• Content Block
• View-on-Web Text
• Opt-out Text

The combined elements can then be managed as a group and share common properties.

For example, you can set display conditions for the entire collection of design elements. This new feature can save designers time, because in previous versions of SAS Customer Intelligence 360, email designers had to set display conditions separately for each design element.

Similarly, designers can also set a single background color for the whole element group:

Background Color Example

Here are some important notes related to element groups:

• Only vertical spacing is provided for element groups. Horizontal spacing can still be managed for each of the blocks that are inside an element group.
• Multiple columns and element groups are mutually exclusive. You cannot add a multiple-columns element to an element group or an element group to a multiple-columns element.

Finally, you can use element groups with the new Custom HTML element (and the Save as HTML feature) so that email designers can easily use creative email assets from outside agencies or existing designs.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital with SAS 360 Engage: Email and SAS 360 Engage: Direct with SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Save and Import Custom HTML in the Email Layout Manager

When editing content for email tasks, designers often want to repurpose HTML creatives that were created in-house or by outside creative agencies. SAS Customer Intelligence 360 provides you with features to both create custom HTML and reuse existing custom HTML in your email tasks.

The HTML can be created in different ways. For example:

• An outside creative agency can design an email campaign or communication and provide you with the HTML file.
• A designer can create the HTML in the Layout Manager and save the element by using the new Save as Custom HTML feature. The HTML code can be saved to an accessible file system or to the asset repository in SAS Customer Intelligence 360.

When you use custom HTML with element groups, you can combine multiple single column sets of elements into an element group that can be saved for reuse.

When you want to reuse the custom HTML in an email task, you can drag the Custom HTML element into the layout. SAS Customer Intelligence 360 imports the HTML, and the system determines whether the HTML was originally created by the Layout Manager or whether it should be processed as standard HTML.

If the HTML was originally created and exported by the Layout Manager, SAS Customer Intelligence 360 reimports the HTML as native elements that you can manage. If the HTML is not recognized as native to the Layout Manager, the custom HTML is imported as is. You can still set element-level properties on the Custom HTML element and use the Responsive Previews option to see how it renders.

Here are some important notes related to the custom HTML feature:

• Any element that is added to an email layout can be saved as custom HTML, except for content blocks. Content blocks can be exported if they are included in an element group that is saved as custom HTML. However, if the HTML is imported back into SAS Customer Intelligence 360, the content block’s creatives and messages are not retained.
• Display conditions are not saved with an element that is exported as custom HTML. If you re-import elements that were saved as HTML, you must define the display conditions again.
• The call-to-action URL is saved in the custom HTML that is generated when you save an element, but the settings for detailed link tracking do not persist. If you import this same element back into a custom HTML element, you must re-enable detailed link tracking.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital with SAS 360 Engage: Email and SAS 360 Engage: Direct with SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Use On-Premises Data in Bulk Email Tasks

With the new on-premises bulk email task, you can use data that is stored in an on-premises data mart when you create an outgoing bulk email task. On-premises data can be used as a source for these items:

• targeting
• personalizing the To: field
• personalizing email content

Note: An important difference between bulk email tasks that use on-premises data versus bulk email tasks that reference cloud data is how you set the merge tags in the To: field. Here is that difference:

• For cloud-based bulk email tasks, you should use the default merge tag %%email_contact%%.
• For on-premises-based bulk email tasks, you should select a merge tag that corresponds to contact data from the on-premises data mart.

In addition, you can define the frequency for re-running the segment map before the task executes.

Frequency Options

 

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Direct with SAS 360 Engage: Email)

Expanded Use of Response Tracking Codes

SAS Customer Intelligence 360 recently introduced the option to pass a response tracking code (RTC) as part of the export template that is used in a direct marketing task.

An RTC is an automatically generated code that represents the unique combination of items that an individual is shown. RTCs are generated when a bulk task is executed. For non-bulk tasks, RTCs are generated when a task is republished.

The combination of items that an RTC represents might include these items, depending on what is available:

• the task and its version
• the occurrence of the task execution (for bulk email, direct marketing, or bulk mobile push)
• the segment and its version
• the content (such as the message or creatives) and the version of the content

Previously, the response tracking code appeared as a column in the export file or in the default contact events of a direct marketing task. Beginning with this release, all task types use RTCs to provide more context and associate an impression or contact event to the subsequent conversion or response. Currently, the only events that store RTC values in data tables are the contact events and response events. In future releases, the RTC will be an attribute on all task events.

Be aware of these important changes that are related to the introduction of RTCs:

• RTCs are used to associate impressions with contacts and conversions with responses.
• Tasks that have multiple executions or republishes can result in a user with multiple conversions, because each republish or new execution results in a new RTC.
• Organizations can inject external events that can be used as a primary metric for a task if the event has an attribute of response_tracking_code. This attribute is recognized by SAS Customer Intelligence 360 and is associated with the RTC for the impression to complete the conversion.
• RTC values are stored in the contact events and response events.
• Metadata about RTCs is stored in the new table MD_RTC for schema version 6.

(Available in SAS 360 Engage: Digital, SAS 360 Engage: Direct, and SAS 360 Engage: Email)