The Marketing Cloud Winter ’23 Release, which occurs from 5^th October through 28^th October 2022, comes with two brand new Data Views, designed to improve the efficiency and success rate of your Automation Studio automations. The new Data Views, _AutomationInstance and _AutomationActivityInstance, allow reviewing automation health to identify points of failure and determine the cause of why some activities take a very long time to run.

Automation Instance Data View

The Automation Instance Data View allows you to get a high-level view of all Automation Studio automations within a tenant, and improve the efficiency and success rate of automations by reviewing automation health. This Data View shows:

• Automations that ran recently
• When an automation ran
• The duration of an automation
• Whether an automation succeeded, skipped, or failed
• The reason an automation failed
• The file that was being processed when a triggered automation failed

The data in this Data View is available 1 day after the automation runs, it holds 31 days of data and can be queried from a Child BU.

The following columns are available:

NAME	DESCRIPTION	DATATYPE
MemberID	The unique ID of the business unit.	Number
AutomationName	The automation name.	Text
AutomationDescription	The automation description.	Text
AutomationCustomerKey	The unique ID of the automation.	Text
AutomationType	The automation’s starting source. Possible values are Schedule, File Drop, or Trigger.	Text
AutomationNotificationRecipient_Complete	The email address where notifications about completed automations are sent.	Text
AutomationNotificationRecipient_Error	The email address where notifications about automation errors are sent.	Text
AutomationNotificationRecipient_Skip	The email address where notifications about skipped automations are sent.	Text
AutomationStepCount	The number of steps in the automation.	Number
AutomationInstanceID	The unique ID of the automation run.	Text
AutomationInstanceIsRunOnce	Whether the automation was set to run once. 1 = true, 0 = false.	Boolean
FilenameFromTrigger	For file drop and trigger automations, the file that started the automation.	Text
AutomationInstanceScheduledTime_UTC	For scheduled automations, the time that the run was scheduled to begin.	Date
AutomationInstanceStartTime_UTC	The time that the automation run started. This value is blank if the run hasn’t started.	Date
AutomationInstanceEndTime_UTC	The time that the automation run ended. This value is blank if the run hasn’t ended.	Date
AutomationInstanceStatus	The status of the automation. Possible values are QueuedFile, Initialized, Executing, Stopped, Complete, or Error.	Text
AutomationInstanceActivityErrorDetails	The message from the error log, if applicable. If a system or unclassified error occurs, the value is System Error. If multiple errors occur, only the first message is displayed. To get details on multiple errors, use the _AutomationActivityInstance view.	Text

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.mc_as_data_view_automation_instance.htm&type=5

Automation Activity Instance Data View

The Automation Activity Instance Data View helps you improve the efficiency and success rate of your automations by reviewing automation activity health. You can use it in Automation Studio to prevent failures by identifying activities that often fail or run long. This Data View shows:

• Activities that ran in an automation
• When an activity ran
• The duration of an activity
• Whether an activity succeeded or failed
• The reason an activity failed

The data in this Data View is also available 1 day after the automation runs, holds 31 days of data and can be queried from a Child BU.

The following columns are available:

NAME	DESCRIPTION	DATATYPE
MemberID	The unique ID of the business unit.	Number
AutomationName	The automation name.	Text
AutomationCustomerKey	The unique ID of the automation.	Text
AutomationInstanceID	The unique ID of the automation run.	Text
ActivityType	The activity type. Possible values are listed in the Activity Type IDs table.	Number
ActivityName	The activity name.	Text
ActivityDescription	The activity description.	Text
ActivityCustomerKey	The unique ID of the activity.	Text
ActivityInstanceStep	Where the activity occurs in the automation. For example, 3.2 is step 3, activity 2.	Text
ActivityInstanceID	The unique ID of the activity run.	Text
ActivityInstanceStartTime_UTC	The time that the activity run started.	Date
ActivityInstanceEndTime_UTC	The time that the activity run ended.	Date
ActivityInstanceStatus	The status of the activity. Possible values are Initialized, Executing, Complete, Error, or NotSelected.	Text
ActivityInstanceErrorDetails	The message from the error log, if applicable. If a system or unclassified error occurs, the value is System Error.	Text

And here is the list of possible Activity Types returned by this Data View:

ACTIVITY TYPE ID	ACTIVITY NAME
33	SMS Activity
42	Send Email
43	Import File
45	Refresh Group
53	File Transfer
73	Data Extract
84	Report Definition
300	SQL Query
303	Filter
423	Script
425	Data Factory Utility Activity
426	Refresh Segment Template
427	Publish Audience
467	Wait
724	Refresh Mobile Filtered List
725	Send SMS
726	Import Mobile Contacts
733	Journey Builder Event Activity
736	Send Push
749	Fire Event
771	Salesforce Email Send
772	Mobile Connect Send Salesforce Sync Subscriber
783	Send GroupConnect
1000	Verification
1010	Interaction Studio Data
1101	Interactions
1701	Batch Personalization
3700	Contact to Business Unit Mapping

Source: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.mc_as_data_view_automation_activity_instance.htm&type=5

Updated Data Views visualization

The Data Views article still remains one of the most popular articles on sfmarketing.cloud, so this recent release from Salesforce is a great occasion for updating the Data Views visualization.

The new visualization is available below in high-quality JPG format (click on the photo to enlarge it) and in PDF format that you can download here.

You can also bookmark my new website, dataviews.io, which is an online version of the above visualization.

Please let me know in case you have any comments or further questions about the Data Views or the visualization, I will be happy to address them during the next revision.

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Questions? Comments?

Leave a comment below or email me at zuzanna@sfmarketing.cloud.

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