A Data Source is a container that holds data within the AAM platform. You must ask the AAM customer to create a Data Source within their instance of the AAM UI. They must provide you with the Data Source ID (an integer). Example, 1234567. This Data Source ID will be part of the file name when sending the onboarded data. Creating a Data Source is documented here.

You should direct the AAM customer to do the following when creating this Data Source -

1. Set ID Type to Cookie (not to worry, non-cookie data can still be transferred)
   
2. Under Data Source Settings, check the Inbound box
   1. select Customer ID for recognizing users; this means the onboarding partner's user ID will be used in the data files

The AAM customer will need to create Traits within the Data Source container mentioned above. These Traits represent the segments that users will belong to. This is also known as setting up the "taxonomy". The AAM customer and the onboarding partner will need to agree on the IDs used to represent each Trait. These Trait IDs will be used by the AAM customer to set up the Trait Rule -- and by the onboarding partner when creating the data files.

Creating a Trait is documented here.

AAM only accepts files with specific file name structure. Read about File Naming.

The following is an example name for a sync file to be onboarded into AAM.

ftp_dpm_321_1234567_1366545717.sync.1.gz

You can send two types of audience data files to AAM - 

• Sync (incremental) files: Used to incrementally add segments to the users listed in the file. Users not included in the file are not altered.
• Overwrite files: Used to replace all known segments for the users listed in the file. Users not included in the file are not altered. 

Learn more about the file name specification from the product documentation -- read File Naming

AAM can process only a very specific content format for data files. Read about File Contents

The following three lines are an example of the contents of an onboarded data file:

• 9030203987920356672630237<TAB>101,102,103
• 8847369200174620484984792<TAB>101,103
• 59099378179472017889984311<TAB>102

Each line represents a specific user. The user ID is the first value (left of the TAB) and the second value (right of the TAB) is a comma-separated list of the trait IDs associated to the user.

Learn more about the file contents specification from the product documentation -- read File Contents

Adobe will host an Amazon S3 space for your organization. This space can then be used to send all customer data files. You will not need to be provided with a new S3 space for each AAM customer.  

After you submit your request form, a member of the Adobe Partner Integrations Team will send you an encrypted pdf containing all the necessary S3 information.