Data Structures

Data Structures are the data formats MXO uses to send data to, or respond to requests from, another system and are used to specify the format and types of customer data that are available to use in those systems.

They represent a view of an individual customers data.

You can configure which data attributes to include in a Data Structure, giving you control over how much information about an individual customer, held in the AEP, you expose to your other systems.

Data can be requested from MXO on demand, in a Pull Data Structure, or pushed from MXO to external systems when a specific event is triggered, in a Push Data Structure.

You can create a Push Data Structure only if you have a Data Adapter that supports push functionality available in your Space. For example, support for push functionality is available in the Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce Data Adapters.

Why Would I Want to Use Data Structures?

Data Structures let you share information held in MXO with your existing systems and interfaces. This enables you to optimize the conversations you have with your customers by ensuring relevant, up-to-date information about those customers is readily available in your existing systems.

They allow you to:

  • Share customer information, held in the AEP, with an existing CRM. For example, to provide your CRM with information about a customers recent interaction history.
  • Push new customer data to another system, such as creating a customer lead in your CRM.

What types of Data Structures can I create?

You can create two types of Data Structures in MXO :

  • Pull Data Structures respond to requests for data from other systems.
  • Push Data Structures are used by Data Adapters to send data to other systems.

Using Pull Data Structures with Journey Builder

You can use Pull Data Structures in Journey Builder’s Interaction Studio (IS) Split. When using your structures with Journey Builder you must be aware of the following:

  • If you make changes to Data Structures already in use in Journey Builder, you must ensure you make the corresponding configuration changes in the Journey Builder IS Split.
  • IS Splits use only the root attributes of a Data Structure. Nested attributes are ignored. For this reason, you must ensure you only provide root attributes for any Data structures you want to use in the IS Split.

Example Scenario

A company want to use customer data stored in MXO for sending an email communication about the new Samsung mobile phone to customers who have shown an interest in Samsung.

Personalized emails, containing a campaign code to use when shopping in store or online, are sent to customers who:

  1. Have already shown interest in Samsung mobile phone online.
  2. Last updated their contract more than 12 months previously.

The company create the following Data Structures to pass information to the external system:

Structure example