Pre-Import Requirements 

Before importing product purchase data, make sure you have first reviewed and the Configuring Identity Resolution article. You should have done the work of creating a system catalog, defining the priority of your systems and defining how the systems are related.

You must have already created the account template that your purchases are associated with. If you have not not done this you should review the importing accounts article. 

For product purchases to be available to use, product bundles must also be loaded to D&B CDP.

If you have completed this, you are now ready to set your templates and load data. 

Creating Import Templates

Step 1: Mapping Product Purchase Fields 

Mandatory Fields

Every Product Purchase can have have the following information associated with it.

Required: 

• Product
• Account
• Transaction Amount
• Transaction Date
• Quantity

Optional: 

• Contact Id - You have the option of including a Contact Id to map transactions to a specific contact record. 
• Transaction Cost - If you map this field, the platform will be able to calculate the margin. 

Step 1a: Load a Sample File to Create a New Template 

Start by clicking on the Import Data button.

Click on Create Template for the Product Purchases Object. 

We recommend using a sample file to create your template. You can load your actual data once the template has been created. 

Step 1b: Map Product Purchase Ids

If you have multiple systems for Accounts and Contacts, you will need to select the system. The AccountId and ContactId values in the product purchase file should be the same as the unique Id of the records in the system you are mapping too. 

Step 1c: Map Product Purchase Attributes 

Step 2: Validation and Save 

Step 2a: Save Template 

Once the upload and field mapping process is complete, D&B CDP will provide you an option to import the data along with the template creation. If you check the option, the file is queued for validation and import. We recommends setting up all the templates first before uploading data.

You will need to confirm by clicking “Submit”. Clicking “Submit” along with the import data option will take you to Jobs page. You will be able to track the progress of the job on this page. For more information on the jobs processing, please refer to the Data Processing and Analysis tab under the Job Page.

Before you can use your purchase data, you must also create a template for product bundles. You should review the article for Creating Import Templates for Product Bundles. 

Step 2b. Pause Automated Sync for Template(s)

A customer master is the final view of data from all your systems. It is strongly recommended that the relationships across systems that contribute to the master are clearly defined upfront before loading the data.

Any changes to the relationship after data is loaded will require a deletion and rebuilding of the customer master. This is an expensive process that can delay access to D&B CDP.

To avoid accidental data loads, we strongly recommends pausing the automated data sync for your template(s). Pausing the automated sync ensures that data available in S3 will not be automatically loaded.

Step 2c. Create Data Automation Pipeline

Each entity in a system has a dedicated AWS S3 drop folder. Data for each entity from the system can be sent to the drop folder in CSV format. The CSV columns should match the template defined in step 2.

Any changes to the format should follow these steps

1. Pause the automated sync for the template(s).
2. Modify the template(s) to reflect the changes.
3. Send data in the new format.
4. Activate the automated sync for the template(s).

It’s recommended that you automate the data transfer from your systems to D&B CDP after templates have been set up. There are several options, including:

• Use built-in connectors to set up automation. This option is only available for Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua and Pardot. 
• Use commercial ETL (extract, transfer and load) tools such as Informatica, Dell Boomi, Stitch Data, etc. to transfer data to specific AWS S3 folders.
• Create custom scripts to extract data from the systems and copy to specific AWS S3 folders.

Note: Data can also be loaded directly through the UI. This option is only recommended for smaller data sets and ad-hoc data loads.

Step 2d. Activate Automated Sync for Template(s)

Before activating automated sync for the template(s), we recommend verifying that:

• Templates are set up correctly and accurately reflect unique IDs and match IDs
• Data being loaded matches the template and is available in the correct location.

Activate the automated sync for your template(s). Once activated, D&B CDP will monitor for data in the drop folder and automatically import data.

Edit Template 

D&B CDP provides the option of changing the saved template with the "Edit Template" option. When it is clicked, the user will be guided through the same field mapping workflow to map/re-map the columns from the input file.

Considerations for Loading Product Purchase Data:

Choosing File Column Names

The platform does not allow to use duplicate names. The platform has a smart feature for auto-mapping and hence names such as,  “Account ID”,”accountid”,” account id”, etc will all be identified as the ID column. Using it more than once causes a duplicate column issue and fails the upload. In such cases, you will need to change the column name to something else while uploading.

Column Name Limits

There is a fixed length you can have on each column name. The maximum length a column name can have is 63 characters.

Replacing Product Purchase History

We do not support update operations to Product Purchases. Once the Purchase history is loaded, any data loaded after will be treated as incremental data. In the scenario of replacing partial or full purchase history, you will need to delete the transactions you are going to update and reload them.

Unlike accounts and contacts, the raw Product Purchase data is not visible on the My Data page.