Invoca

stevestormoen · ‎01-08-2019

If you need to connect Invoca to another marketing app, in most cases you would use one of our API-based integrations or Invoca webhooks to automatically share data between your two systems. In some uncommon cases — often due to an organizational policy or technical limitation — those options might be unavailable. In order to support your business in these situations, Invoca offers another tool to support your integrations, called a data delivery.

Instead of automatically sending data directly to your third-party app using an API, like in our normal integrations, a data delivery regularly compiles and sends a file full of Invoca data. You can choose to deliver that data to an FTP folder, email address, or Amazon S3 bucket, or — if the system you’re sending data to supports it — directly to your other marketing app as a “file import”. PGP encryption is also supported for data deliveries.

When should I use an Invoca data delivery?

In most cases, we recommend you set up a traditional integration using one of our connect apps, APIs, or webhooks, rather than create a data delivery. However, a data delivery might be the right choice if:

Your organization has a policy against API-based integrations.
The tool you’d like to integrate with doesn’t accept any form of data transfer except for file uploads.

How do I create a new Invoca data delivery?

Once you’ve determined that a data delivery is the best option for your integration, submit a request by sending an email to your Account Executive. If you have an assigned Customer Success Manager (CSM), we encourage you to copy your CSM as well.

Please include:

File name
You can choose a custom name for your file, which is helpful if the system you’re sending data to requires a specific naming convention.
Data delivery file format
We support various formats, including CSV, tab, and pipe delimited files.

PGP encryption:
PGP encryption is disabled by default. If you would like to have your data deliveries encrypted using PGP, please send the public key as a key file or ACII-armored text. Please ensure you have the private key for decryption as there is no way for Invoca to verify the contents of a data delivery file once it is encrypted. The file type will be delivered as a .csv.gpg.
Report type and data
Invoca can build custom reports based on the data in the Calls report or Transactions report. We can even further customize the data in your report if you need — see the FAQs at the bottom of this article for more details.

Note:
If you’re unsure of what data you’d like delivered, login to your Invoca account and click Reports in your gray menu bar, then take a look at your Transactions and Calls reports. It’s a great way to understand the data that is available.
Schedule
You can send your files in a daily, weekly, or monthly delivery, as well as choose the day, hour, and time zone of your deliveries. Weekly deliveries can be sent on any day of the week; monthly deliveries can be sent on either the first or last day of the month. Each delivery will include all data in your report since the previous delivery was sent.

Destination
Specify whether you want to send your data deliveries to an email address, FTP/SFTP folder, or Amazon S3 bucket, along with the following data for your account:

FTP or SFTP:
- Host
- Port
- Username and Password
  OR
  SSH Private Key (you may provide a Passphrase with the private key if you would like)
- Path/Directory (if applicable)
Email (Invoca will deliver the file as an email attachment):
- Email address(es)
- Email subject line
Amazon S3 bucket:
- AWS Access Key ID
- AWS Secret Access Key
- Name of the Amazon S3 Bucket

Your Account Manager and our Customer Support team will use this information to understand the complexity and scope of your data delivery, and we’ll put together an order form amendment detailing the fees and the Statement of Work. Once the paperwork is completed, the team will generate a sample file based on the information provided and get your approval that the format looks good. Once approved, the data delivery will be scheduled to be delivered to your destination.

If you need assistance with the file format, our team is happy to offer guidance. In this case, please include documentation provided by the third party as well as the details of a technical contact that can answer any questions our team might have.

FAQs

Is there a cost to set up a data delivery?

Yes, there is a one-time implementation fee, dependent on project complexity and scope.

What are the limitations?

FTPS is not supported.
HTTPS is not supported.
FTP and SFTP data deliveries can only be sent to Ports 21 and 22.
Files cannot be compressed (e.g. .zip, .gzip, .tar).
Formula values are not supported. For example if three Signals are met for a call, Invoca cannot populate “3” in the field.
Invoca does not provide a way for a third party system to pull files from an Invoca hosted FTP or S3 bucket, we will only generate and deliver to an FTP or S3 bucket hosted by the customer or their third party provider.
We cannot split a file into multiple deliveries if the file exceeds a certain size.

What are my options for manipulating the Invoca data sent in my data deliveries?

If you find you need to further customize the report from what is generated in the Invoca platform, some data manipulation is supported. The below is an example of a few tricks we have up our sleeve to cover the most popular data manipulations.

• Customize headers
One great feature of data deliveries is that the column header names can be customized. So even if the Transaction Details report shows a field name of “Caller ID”, you can rename this to whatever you wish in the data delivery file. This provides great flexibility and allows Invoca to better comply with technical specifications imposed by third party systems.

• Filter for certain rows
There are some handy and powerful filtering rules that can applied to the data delivery.

In addition to looking for a specific value or multiple values, you also have the option to filter if a value is simply present or not. A good example is if you are sending data to a third party system that requires their unique identifier to be present in order to process the data. You can require that a value is present for that parameter in order to include the row in the file.

It’s even possible to combine filtering rules. For example, when analyzing whether a specific Call row should be included in the file, the logic can require utm_source=ppc and a value is present for the gclid Custom Data field.

• Hard-coding field values
It is possible to have a column with a hard-coded field value that is not in Invoca reports. For example, you could have a Transactions report filtered for rows that have a Signal Name of “Quote Inquiry” and a “Count” column that always passes “1”. In this case, the number “1” is not in Invoca reports, but can be hard-coded in the file for every row.

Furthermore, if you have a hard-coded value you would like to populate based on an Invoca data point, we can do that too! For example, if the utm_source=ppc, Invoca can populate “Paid Search” instead of “ppc”.

How do I disable a data delivery?

Submit a request by clicking the Contact Support button below and a helpful member of our team will disable the data delivery. Once disabled, files will no longer be generated or delivered to the destination.

If a file fails to get delivered, will Invoca retry?

Invoca has monitoring in place to track issues with data deliveries. There are a few common scenarios we will see an alert for an error: invalid FTP or S3 credentials, an internal server error or “Internet weather”, or the file could not be generated due to missing configuration details and the like. While issues should be rare, having alerting helps us address issues quickly. For things like “Internet weather”, we will retry sending the file. For other issues that might be related to incorrect or expired credentials, we will reach out to you to get updated information and then retry.

My FTP credentials have changed. How can I have my data delivery file sent to the new FTP destination?

Please send through a request by clicking the Contact Support button at the bottom of this article. If you need to update the FTP password, we strongly encourage you to share the FTP password in a secure way. For example, we have had customers share sensitive credentials using the password management app LastPass. A member of the Customer Success team can provide the email address to use if you’d like to use LastPass or a similar solution.

I need to add a column or filter to my data delivery. How can I edit my data delivery file specifications?

We’re happy to help. Submit a request by clicking the Contact Support button below and provide information about your desired edits.

Why don’t the Call and/or Signal transactions in my file match the date in my filename?

The filename will contain the date that the file was generated, but the actual rows in the file will include Call and/or Signal transactions based on the data delivery date range. For example, a file on a daily schedule that is delivered on 11/2/18 would have a filename with “11-02-18”, but will contain Call and/or Signal transactions from 11/1/18.

Related:
• Basic Knowledge: Integrations
• Best practices for configuring and managing your integrations
• Basic Knowledge: Invoca webhooks

SrinivasDaram · ‎10-24-2023

I am new to Invoca.

Looking for seps to exporting data from Invoca to S3 bucket. Can anyone share a document or where to start, what kind of role needed. Could find a specific document or option once logged into my account.

Thank you