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About Scheduled Import
Instead of repeating uploading a file to Apsis One manually, you can schedule imports. Set up your system to upload files to the Apsis Cloud SFTP server. Apsis provides a dedicated SFTP area and credentials for each customer account.
💡 Tip: In some cases a scheduled import can be an alternative to setting up an complex integration. This requires some familiarity with FTP or an automated setup.
We provide a free cloud storage for all our customers' file imports. Each customer has a secure area to upload files that will be importable on a schedule. This storage needs minimal initialisation to set up. Read on to learn how.
How to Setup Scheduled Import
There are three steps to setting up a scheduled File Import:
Initialising the cloud storage
Uploading a file
Scheduling the file import
Initialising the Apsis Cloud storage (SFTP)
As is standard in Apsis One, users can initialise a separate cloud storage slice per section.
1. Go to your user icon and go to Settings.
2. Go to the Section, where you want set up the scheduled import.
3. Choose SFTP Storage in the left menu and click Create new connection to set it up. Then enter an SSH public key.
SSH keys
SSH public key authentication is a more secure and efficient alternative to username/password authentication and is used in this case to authenticate an external computer with Apsis Cloud.
4. Generate a separate SSH public/private key pair for the computer connecting to APSIS Cloud. Plenty of third-party FTP clients can generate key pairs easily, but it's possible to do it in the command line for Mac or Linux systems without additional software.
5. Copy the public key into the SSH public key text field in SFTP Storage and click on Create.
Apsis One creates a new login ID that is connected to the public key.
6. Use this pair (login & public key) to log in to their SFTP hosting area and upload the file.
Uploading a file
7. With the login ID and public key, log in to your cloud storage in Apsis One with any SFTP client. The SFTP server is at fi-sftp.webscript.apsis.one (port 22).
Uploading a file to APSIS One is done as usual via each user's preferred SFTP client. Single files are preferable, but folder structures are respected and will be visible when looking for a file to use during file import.
Prepare file
Prepare a file with your Profile data:
Email addresses must be included
Consent - make sure you have consent from all Profiles you add to a Subscription
First row describing the data of each column.
Format: CSV or XLS/XLSX
Size: up to 50 MB
The format of the values for Attributes in your file must be correct in order for the system to recognize the data. Read more about Supported Data Formats.
Scheduling the file import
When the file is uploaded to Apsis One, it is time to schedule the import.
8. Navigate to the import history in Audience and click Create Scheduled Import.
9. Choose the file you want to use from the dropdown listing all the files uploaded to cloud storage.
10. Once you have selected the file follow the steps for mapping columns and Attributes.
11. Locate all the scheduled file imports in the Import history menu under Schedules.
Automation
In-house IT or consultants can prepare any internal computer system to connect and upload data to Apsis Cloud regularly or after a change in the relevant files, using the credentials generated with SSH and APSIS One. Then the scheduled file import can use the updated file when it is scheduled to run.
The process looks like this:
A user modifies a file in a shared or personal folder with new profile data.
A script runs to upload the updated file to Apsis Cloud, replacing the old file.
After some time, a scheduled file import runs to ingest the file into Audience.
If there is no great need for real-time data, this process could be run at the end of each working date, providing a marketer with the latest data every morning.
Limitations
There is a limit of two concurrent scheduled file imports per account and one per section.
File size: maximum 50 MB.
Format: CSV or XLS/XLSX
SFTP storage only supports SSH keys based on the RSA and ECDSA algorithms.
Uploaded files will be deleted after 30 days.
What's Next?