Data Mapping Best Practices

Planning Considerations

Plan ahead before you begin mapping your data to DMOs in Data 360.

• Create a report, an offline data dictionary, or source system inventory.
• Identify field-level data and analyze its accuracy.
• Review available standard data model objects (DMOs) and associated fields that your data can map to.
  • If gaps are identified, extend standard objects by adding custom fields or create a new custom DMOs on the Data Model tab. See instructions on creating custom data model objects.
• Consider how each data source and corresponding fields relates to the object you want to unify, such as the Individual or Account objects.
  • For example, if you’re bringing in web engagement data, ensure that it’s mapped to the Individual DMO or an attribute that is mapped to the Individual DMO to better understand user consumption and behavior on your site.
  • Consider the downstream use cases of the mapping. For example, to create a segment on individuals who browsed the blue shirt, map engagement data to the Individual DMO.
• Set the category, or type of data, when you set up the DLO or schema corresponding to the dataset that you’re importing. A DMO inherits its category from the first DLO mapped to it. You can create subsequent mappings between the following categories.
  • Profile DLOs can map to Profile DMOs or Other DMOs but not to Engagement DMOs.
  • Engagement DLOs can map only to Engagement DMOs.
  • Other DLOs can map to Profile DMOs or Other DMOs but not to Engagement DMOs.

Mapping Person Account Fields

Person accounts use fields from both the Account and Contact objects. Because person accounts represent people, map person account fields to the Individual DMO.

• Map the Contact object to Individual DMO and use Contact Id as Individual Id. This mapping makes the Contact Id your Subscriber Key in Marketing Cloud Engagement during activation. It also limits post-processing SQL and reduces the risk of introducing a new subscriber keys.
• Map the Contact object to the Account Contact DMO.
• Map the Account object to the Account DMO.

Transformation and Relationships

Once your model is established, review if you need to adjust formula fields, create transforms, or review data relationships.

• Establish how the source data must be transformed and mapped into the standard data model. Not all source systems provide normalized export options or normalize data to the same degree. For more information, see help topic on normalized and denormalized data.
• Visualize objects and relationships holistically with the graph view on the Data Model tab. In many cases, it’s better to inspect the relationships or lack of holistically for all mapped objects in the data model rather than through a single object. For more information see help topic on viewing data model objects.

Troubleshooting

• If you’re attempting to map a DLO but don’t see a specific target DMO in the object selector, check that the category of your DLO matches one of the categories of DMO it can map to. The UI shows a list of DMOs to choose from, filtered by compatible categories and omitting objects with incompatible categories.