Creating an SFTP Activation

Secure FTP Option

In addition to a wide variety of third party options that you can run an Activation through, it is also possible to simply create a Secure FTP Upload for you to use as you see fit. This will convert the Audiences and/or Calculated Attributes you attach to it into a .csv file on your secure server, and can be customized to a degree.

General Information

As with a normal Activation, you will need to input some basic data to create the activation - a name, an (optional) description, and a Person Identifier, selected from a short list.

FTP Information

This section, uniquely, is as much configuration as server information.

Host: A full URL for the Server Host where the files will be stored.

Username and Password: Login-details for the SFTP-server.

Path: The path for the server directory where the files will be stored.

File Name Suffix: Whatever you enter here will be appended to the auto-generated filenames. Useful for keeping track of your files!

Delimiter: The character separator used in the created file. Defaults to , - so if you require something different for the further treatment of the data, make sure to change it here.

Create Header: A drop-down selector where you can set this to True or False. If set to True, as is the Default, the CSV-file will have a header showing the names of the relevant Audiences/Attributes.

Create File Per Audience: Here you can select whether each Audience and/or Calculated Attribute you link to the Activation creates its own file (True), or if a single file is created for them all (False). In this case, False, meaning one file only, is considered the default.

SHA256 Encode: You can select whether to encode your data using a SHA256 algorithm, adding extra security for the personal information contained in audience-lists. Can be set to True or False, with the latter being the default.

🔍 Filename behavior: By default, SFTP Activations upload files using the configured filename. To avoid overwriting files on the SFTP server, you can enable Add datetime to filename. When enabled, the upload time is automatically appended to the filename using the following format:

yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss Example: customers_export_2026-03-26_14-12-00.csv

This ensures that each upload creates a unique file on the SFTP server.

Scheduling

Here, you select how often you wish the data to be uploaded, and when to start.

Add Audience & Calculated Attributes

Your selection here is what ultimately becomes the contents of the CSV-file that will be created by the system. You can select as many as you'd like, of both types.

When finished, simply click Save to finalize the Activation setup.