Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio and Its Activities

Automation Studio

Automation Studio is a very awesome tool in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. One can perform lots of tasks via automation studio. It helps us to perform different tasks from a single tool and that too with very effective results.

We can manage multi-step marketing and also manage the data with the help of an automation studio.

Basically, we have two tabs in the Automation studio:

1. Overview: All the automation exists here or if you want to create an automation, you can create it from the overview tab.
2. Activities: Activities are the actions we configured in the automation studio as per our requirement. All the activities whether they are getting used in automation or not reside here.

Activities in the automation studio are reusable. We can use one activity in multiple automation. Each activity has its own steps for its configuration.

Don't forget to check out: What is Case Automation Tool in Salesforce

Automation Studio Activities

Below are the activities which are present in Automation Studio.

1. 1. Send Email Activity: This activity is used when we want to send an email to the data extensions in the marketing cloud. We just need to define our target audience, a template that is to be sent, and a suppression audience if there is any.
   2. Salesforce Send Email Activity: This is the same as the email send activity but instead of sending the email to the audience that exists in the standard data extension folder, it is used to send emails to the Salesforce data extensions.
   3. Import Activity: In order to import the data from any other source like FTP, Salesforce reports, etc, then this activity comes underuse. We can import the data into the data extension by using the import activity.
      We can also import Salesforce objects or reports data into the data extension if our user is integrated. In order to import Salesforce data you just need to create import via Email Studio > Interactions> Import.
      Import created in Interactions will automatically get reflected in automation studio.
   4. File Transfer Activity: To transfer a file from the Marketing cloud to another location we can use File Transfer Activity. We can use this activity when we want to move, unzip, encrypt, or decrypt a file.
   5. Data Extract Activity: This activity is used to extract data and also can be used to convert an XML file into a comma-delimited, tab-delimited, or pipe-delimited file for import into Marketing Cloud.
   6. Script Activity: Script activity is used to execute the Server-Side JavaScript into the marketing cloud. We mainly use Script activity when we want to host and run resources for Cloud Landing pages.
   7. Wait Activity: This activity simply helps to wait for automation or its activity as per the specified time.
   8. Verification Activity: This activity helps in verification to avoid the unintended data to be used or to move further in the automation studio.
   9. Filter Activity: Filter activity is used to filter out the data as per the filter defined in the Email Studio. We first need to create a data filter in Email Studio and then use that filter to configure it into the automation filter activity.
      Filter activity creates the data extension automatically into the folder where the source, on which filter has been applied, exists.
   10. SQL Query Activity: This activity runs the same as SQL. If we want to fetch or filter the data from any other data extension and save the data into another data extension then we use SQL query activity.
       SQL provides us more flexibility than the filter activity because we can reduce the number of fields in the target data extension and only fetch those in our query.

Check out another amazing blog by Udit here: Data Security in Salesforce