Learn about enabling and using program extensions.
Overview
Once you enable your program extension, you can do things like:
- Send a contact to your audiences in Google Ads and Facebook Audience
- Subscribe a contact to your Magento store's marketing emails
- Send a postcard by using Lob
- Add a contact to an address book in another account with Engagement Cloud
- Create custom extensions so you can make HTTP requests to selected endpoints
Important
Program extensions need to be authorised by your account manager, whether you're enabling an extension that’s already set up, or creating and enabling a custom one.
Enabling your program extension
There are differences between enabling a program extension, specifically if you already have one that’s set up or want to add a custom one.
Existing program nodes
If an extension exists in Engagement Cloud:
- Make sure you have an active account with the extension provider.
- Enable the extension provider in your account by contacting your account manager.
- Create a profile for the extension by going to Settings > Access > Extension profiles > Add. You can create multiple profiles per extension.
After creating a profile, you are ready to use the extension in the program builder. You can access the extension by going to Extensions.
Each extension has its own specific profile creation, configuration steps, and user guide, which can be found in the Program builder area of the Help centre.
Non-existing program nodes
If an extension doesn’t exist in Engagement Cloud and you want to add one:
Step 1: Contact your account manager
Supply our account team with the following details:
- Base URL
- Authentication methods
- Custom name for the extension provider
A notification is sent to your when this is completely set up on our end. Only basic authentication and no authentication are supported for custom extension providers.
Step 2: Create the extension profile
Create a profile for the extension by going to Settings > Access > Extension profiles > Add. You can create multiple profiles per extension.
After creating a profile, you are ready to use the extension in the program builder. You can access the extension by going to Extensions.
Each extension has its own specific profile creation, configuration steps, and user guide, which can be found in the Program builder area of the Help centre.
Configuring a program extension node
Once a program extension is available in the program builder, you need to configure it, so it can perform an action. To configure a node:
- Drag the node to the program builder canvas from the Extensions panel.
- Select the node.
- Configure the node.
Information
You can learn how to configure your extension node by checking out our program builder area in the Help centre. Once a program is activated and a contact reaches this node in your program, the action is carried out for the contact.
Testing a node
You should test your extensions, so you can be sure they are working properly. This is helpful because you can identify and fix any problems before program activation. If your extension doesn’t work as expected, you are informed by a response code, and it shows you what needs to be fixed.
Important
It's important to keep the following in mind:
- Make sure you're supplying accurate data in your requests, otherwise your extension won’t work.
- We can’t guarantee the success of your extension requests, or verify whether your data is executable, before you use a custom extension node.
- Make sure you’re complying with the data requirements of the extension provider.
Defining terms
Here is an explanation of the terminology you may encounter:
- Batch
A group of personalised web requests that are sent to the request executor. - HTTP request
An HTTP request generated from a web hook request; sent to the third party end point. - HTTP response
An HTTP response received from the third party end point.
Defining requests and responses
Here are the request and response restrictions:
- The internal HttpClient has a timeout that defaults to 5 seconds. Once exceeded, the request is marked as failed. This doesn’t terminate the rest of the batch.
- An HTTP request body cannot exceed the default maximum size of 10000 bytes. If the request body exceeds this value, the extension request fails. This doesn’t terminate the rest of the batch.
- An HTTP response body cannot exceed the default maximum size of 10000 bytes. If the response body size exceeds this value, the response body is cut down a bit before storage.
- On receipt of an HTTP response with a status code of 401 unauthorised, the entire batch is terminated.