Writing additionally tracked fields to contact history
You can create additionally tracked fields and populate them in the base contact history table. For example, you might want to write out the treatment code from the treatment table, or an offer attribute, as an additionally tracked field in contact history.
However, since it is cell membership that is being captured in base contact history, and each target or control cell writes one row per audience ID, note that if you are populating additionally tracked fields in base contact history with offer or treatment data, only the first treatment for each target or control cell is written out.
Example
Cell
Associated control cell
Offer given to cell
TargetCell1
ControlCell1
OfferA, OfferB
TargetCell2
ControlCell1
OfferC
ControlCell1
-
-
When the flowchart containing the contact process that assigns the listed offers to TargetCell1 and TargetCell2 is run in production (with writing to contact history enabled), a treatment is created for each combination of cell, offer given, and the run date/time. In other words, six treatments are created in this example:
Treatments
Treatment Code
TargetCell1 receiving OfferA
Tr001
TargetCell1 receiving OfferB
Tr002
ControlCell1 receiving OfferA
Tr003
ControlCell1 receiving OfferB
Tr004
TargetCell2 receiving OfferC
Tr005
ControlCell1 receiving OfferC
Tr006
If you have added Treatment Code as an additionally tracked field in base contact history, only the first target or control treatment for each cell is written out. In this example, therefore, only three rows are written to base contact history, for the first treatment for each cell:
Cell
Treatment Code
Target Cell1
Tr001
ControlCell1
Tr003
TargetCell2
Tr005
For this reason, capturing offer-level attributes in the base contact history table may not be a good practice, since it will only provide complete contact information if:
only one offer is assigned to any target cell; and
each control cell is assigned to only one target cell.
In any other instance, only data associated with the first treatment (or control treatment) is output. An alternative is to use a database view to flatten and provide access to offer-level information by joining the UA_ContactHistory and UA_Treatment system tables. You can also output this information to alternate contact history.
In detailed contact history and alternate contact history, the behavior is different; a row is written for each treatment (rather than a row for each cell). Therefore, if you output offer attribute information as additionally tracked fields, complete treatment information can be displayed as rows are written out for all treatments.
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