Previewing field values from your user data

When you configure a process in a flowchart, you can use the Profile feature to preview field values. This feature lets you see actual values from fields in your user data. You can profile any field in a mapped data source. You can also profile derived fields.

Before you begin

You must have the appropriate permissions to profile fields. Ask your system administrator if you have questions about your access to this feature. Also note that your administrator can prevent fields from being profiled. You see a warning if you try to profile a field that is also an audience because profiling an audience can return many records and potentially impact performance.

About this task

When you profile a field, you can view and select values to use in the current operation, for example to build a query for a Select process.

In addition to listing the values, the Profile feature indicates each value's frequency of occurrence in the selected field. You can use this information to ensure that you are targeting the intended contacts. Only records in the current cell are included in the count, unless the counts were pre-computed.

Procedure

  1. Open a flowchart for editing and begin to configure a process.
  2. In the configuration dialog of a process that includes the Profile button, such as Select, Extract, or Segment, select the field that you want to profile.
  3. Click Profile.
    Unica Campaign profiles the data in the selected field. The Category and frequency Count fields are updated as profiling progresses.

    Wait until profiling is complete before using the results, to ensure that all categories are processed and counts are complete.


    Profile selected field

Results

When profiling is complete, the Profile selected field dialog shows the following information:

  • The list of values in the selected field, shown in the Category column, and the corresponding Count of IDs with that value. Unica Campaign organizes values by category, grouping them to create approximately equal-sized segments. The default maximum number of categories (distinct bins of values) for display is 25. You can change the maximum number of categories.
  • The Statistics pane shows the total count of IDs and other details about the data for that field, including:
    • The number of NULL values found.
    • The total number of categories, or values, for that field.
    • Statistical values for the data including the mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum values.
      Note: Mean, Stdev, Min, and Max are not available for ASCII fields. When you profile text fields, these values appear as all zeros.