Introduction
Typically, when people think about a Customer Data Platform, they consider its ability to help them create a 360-degree view of their customers across disparate data systems. While that capability is an important part of a Customer Data Platform, it's not necessarily the most important part. Most important is what it allows you to do with the data after you ingest it, unify it, and build insights around it. For example, if the predictive insights that you set up in your Customer Data Platform tell you that a customer is likely to churn (decide to no longer do business with you), you need to act on that data. The actions that you plan to take, such as sending coupons or having a sales representative reach out, aren't implemented by your Customer Data Platform. Those actions are completed by other applications. The coupons that you send might be part of a customer journey that you implement in your preferred marketing application. Likely, your sales staff engages with customers by using some type of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. A good Customer Data Platform makes it easier for your organization to use that data in the applications that it uses every day.
The Exports feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights - Data helps you share specific data with various applications. This data might include customer profiles, entities, schemas, and mapping details. Each export requires a connection to be set up. This connection manages authentication and access to the application that you're exporting to.
Two main types of exports are:
Data-out - Export any type of entity that's available in Customer Insights. The entities that you select for export are exported with all data fields, metadata, schemas, and mapping details.
Segment - Export segment entities from Customer Insights - Data. Segments represent a list of customer profiles. When you're setting up the export, select the included data fields, depending on the target system that you plan to export data to.
Export segments
You can set up Customer Insights - Data to support organizations that target business accounts (B-to-B) or individual consumers (B-to-C), which are represented by different environments in the application. Some organizations might have business accounts and individual customers in the same Customer Insights - Data instance. While most export options support both types of environments, exporting segments to different systems have specific requirements. Generally, a segment member (which uses the customer profile) contains contact information. While this scenario is usually the case for segments that are built on individual consumers (B-to-C), it might not be the case for segments that are based on business accounts (B-to-B). Make sure that you're aware of the differences between exporting segments for B-to-B versus B-to-C scenarios.
Segment differences between environment types
When you build segments in the context of environments for business accounts, they're built on the account entity. To export account segments in their current state, the target system needs to support pure account segments. An example is exporting to LinkedIn when you choose the company option while defining the export. (Exporting to LinkedIn is explained in more detail later.) All other target systems require fields from the contact entity. In these scenarios, make sure that your account segments can retrieve data from related contacts that are associated with the account.
When you build segments in the context of environments for individual customers, those segments are built on the unified customer profile entity. Every segment that meets the requirements of the target systems (such as an email address) can be exported.
Set up a new export
Not everyone who might have access to the Customer Insights - Data application can create exports. You need to have connections available to you. The different connections that are available to you depend on your user role. Connections by role are as follows:
Administrators have access to all connections. They can also create new connections when setting up an export.
Contributors can have access to specific connections. They depend on administrators to set up and share connections.
Viewers can only view existing exports, not create them.
For more information, see assigning user permissions.
When you set up an export, make sure that you define the connection that you want to use for the export. Specific connectors that are available to you vary based on your user role. You need to define different options based on the connector that you select.
After you define an export, you can view the details that are related to the exports from the Exports page. For each export that is defined, you can view the refresh status of the export job and when it was last refreshed.
Also, you can perform tasks on the export job, such as creating a copy of the job, defining a schedule, and modifying and removing the job.
For more information, see working with exports.
The remainder of this module examines how to export Customer Insights data to some of the more common applications that it's often used with.