Feed layout general information

This section describes general information related to working with feed layouts and mapping data to feed layouts.

How do you use a feed layout?

This is where the overall process of onboarding your data begins. As with any other CDP build, you need to identify all of your sources of data and types of customer data that each of those sources has that can be extracted from that source system. 

Once you have a list of all of the sources and the available sets of data from those sources, as described in Data ingestion basics, you can start to map your data to specific feed layouts based on the subject areas of the source data. There is a feed layout for each subject area, and you may have data from a single source that is applicable to multiple subject areas and needs to be mapped to more than one feed layout.

The various subject areas and associated feed layouts each provide a pipeline to get data into the data model. There is a feed layout definition (FLD) for each of the feed layouts that consists of a set of columns that outline the details of all of input fields supported by the feed layout, along with the intent of the field, a description, and some additional details.

Refer to Data ingestion details for details about each feed layout.

Common FLD Fields

This table describes the fields that are common to all FLDs.

Field Names	Field Description
Business Name	Business-friendly name of the field.
Field Name	Actual field name to be used in the file. This should be formatted as ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Field Description	Description of the field. This column also provides information about the following, where applicable: If the field is Required. Fields marked as (Required) will not pass validation if they are not provided. These required fields are the minimum required and do not guarantee that the data will be functional, even if they are provided. If a field is not marked as required, it’s optional. If the field is a natural primary key of the primary table of the data domain. This determines what gets inserted into the table vs. updated in the table. If the field is used in a summary aggregate calculation. Valid values, including the specific format for the values, where applicable. Pay close attention to the valid values and their format; if the specified format is not followed, all records will fail validation.
Field Data type/length	Data type and length of the field. Allowed data types are: bigint, char (L), date (F), datetime (F), decimal (F), float, integer, nchar (L), nvarchar (L), smallint, time (F), tinyint, varchar (L). Data types marked with (L) require that Length be populated. Data types marked with (F) require that Format be defined.
Match Field	Name of field to use in matching.
Target Table Name 1	Target Table Name 1. This should be formatted as ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Target Column Name 1	Target Field Name 1. This should be formatted as ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Target Table Name 2	Target Table Name 2. This should be formatted as ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Target Column Name 2	Target Field Name 2. This should be formatted as ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Transformation/Mapping	Identifies any transformation or mapping that is applied.

Standard valid values and lookup tables

The Field description specifies if a set of values is used as a part of the validation when the feed layout is processed. When the valid values reference a lookup table, the field will be populated with a link to the lookup table section of the documentation so that you can see the valid values and additional details related to using and updating the lookup tables.

For more details about lookup tables, refer to Lookup tables overview.