File and database templates

In outbound customer engagement, Pega Customer Decision Hub sends action messages to customers directly via email or SMS. That is, Pega Customer Decision Hub directly communicates with the email or SMS servers to send out outbound messages to qualified customers.

However, sometimes the necessary infrastructure to send action messages directly to customers may not be available. In such cases, you need to use a third-party email/SMS distributor. You need a medium to transfer the action and customer details, to a third-party distributor, which is typically a file or a database table.

Pega Customer Decision Hub enables you to write the file in one of the following cloud-based destinations as well as the local filesystem.

• JFrog Artifactory
• Amazon S3
• Microsoft Azure

Pega Customer Decision Hub enables you to easily write action details to a file on the local system or on a cloud-based destination such as Amazon S3 or to a database table, which can be sent to a third-party vendor or application for distribution. To achieve this, you need to configure an action flow to include a Send shape with the file or database template option enabled.

The four available Send shapes that can be used for this purpose are: Send Email, Send SMS, Send Multi, and Send Generic. Any one of these shapes can be used to write action details to a file or a database table. However, when you know that the action messages will be sent eventually via Email or SMS by the third-party vendor, it is better to use the corresponding shape, as this will clearly illustrate the purpose of the component and the channel will be recorded as an Email or SMS in the Interaction History.

If you are unsure of the communication channel, or if it is a channel that Pega Customer Decision Hub cannot directly integrate with, use the Send Generic shape.

Details of multiple actions can be written to the same file or database table. To do this, you need to configure the same file/database table template in multiple action flows. This functionality is useful when the Next-Best-Action outbound schedule includes multiple actions. This approach consolidates multiple action details into a single location.