The Snowflake Beacon Table Destination allows activation queries performed on a Snowflake Beacon Dataset to be exported to a predetermined table located in the same Snowflake account where the Beacon App was installed. 

Table of contents

Snowflake Beacon Destination pre-requisites

Activation Keys

Configure the Snowflake Beacon Table Destination in the Platform

Activating data to a Snowflake

Snowflake Beacon Destination pre-requisites

• You must have a Snowflake Beacons App installed on your Snowflake account
  • You do not need to configure the App to allow for exports if this is your only destination. This is because this Destination can only write to your data storage, not to any third parties. 
• You must have a Dataset published from your Snowflake Beacon that contains export columns (owned or permissioned in the Collaboration)
• Your activation query must export data from the Snowflake Dataset
• You must define a table on your Snowflake account with the correct columns and grant Beacon app access to the database, schema and table from within your Snowflake account.
  The activation data must match the columns, there is an option to map activation headers to column names as part of the destination. You do not need to populate all columns in the table but you will need at least as many columns in the table as in your export. 
  
  The required grants are:
  • Table: INSERT, TRUNCATE (truncate is only required for the “overwrite” option on push, if this is never going to be enabled, then the truncate grant is not strictly necessary).
  • Schema: USAGE
  • Database: USAGE
    You can run the following script on your Snowflake account to perform the grants:

GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE <YOUR_DATABASE>

TO APPLICATION <APP_INSTALL_NAME>;

GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA <YOUR_DATABASE>.<YOUR_SCHEMA>

TO APPLICATION <APP_INSTALL_NAME>;

GRANT INSERT, TRUNCATE ON TABLE <YOUR_DATABASE>.<YOUR_SCHEMA>.<YOUR_TABLE> TO APPLICATION <APP_INSTALL_NAME>;

If you have multiple Datasets with different data formats, you can create multiple destinations that point to different tables that match the specific formatting. Please name each destination accordingly to help you manage exports to the right location.

Activation Keys

The connector does not have a predetermined set of keys; instead, you must define a table on your Snowflake account with the columns corresponding to the format of the data you wish to write. 

Configure the Snowflake Beacon Table Destination in the Platform

Navigate to Activations > Destinations. 

Click Create a new destination, then select the Snowflake Beacon Table from the list of options. 

Give your Destination a name and click next.

The following form will appear. You must fill in all required fields. 

• Database: Name of the Snowflake database to write to. Please ensure this is in the same Snowflake account where you installed  the Beacons App or any exports will fail. 
• Schema: Name of the Snowflake schema to write to
• Table: Name of the Snowflake table to write to

Important: If the table/schema/database name is case-sensitive, the values in the destination must be provided surrounded by double quotes.

Optional settings:

• Overwrite existing data:  
  • Enable it to replace the content of the table with each new push
  • Disable it to append the rows of each push to any existing content on the table
• Column mapping: You can use this setting to map the Snowflake Table and your Dataset in InfoSum if they have different column names.
  • You do not need to populate all columns in the table in snowflake but you need at least as many columns as you’re exporting.

Click Submit. Your Destination is now ready to use. 

Please note we don’t verify the connection details until you export a query, if this is your first time creating this type of destination, we recommend doing a test push to verify the setup. 

Activating data to a Snowflake Beacon Table

You can create an activation segment using either Segment Builder or the Query Tool. 

1. Navigate to Activation Segments & start an export

Once you’ve created the activation segment, go to the Activation Segments tab under Activate, where you can find all of the historic segments that have been created by your team for that collaboration. Please ensure you are in the correct Collaboration view at the top for the Activation you're looking for. 

A ‘ready’ status shows that the query has been successful and is ready to be sent to a Destination. Activation segments are only ‘Ready’ for 36 hours, this is to ensure that you are always exporting the freshest data. You can easily refresh a segment by clicking ‘refresh’ in the details panel of each segment. 

When you select an Activation segment, an information panel appears on the side of the page allowing you to view the segment and export it to a Destination with the correct permissions for that Collaboration. 

You can click ‘Export’ to start a new export, or click ‘View’ / double-click on the activation segment name to view all exports associated with this segment.

2. Select your destination

After you click Export, a new pane will appear with a list of the destinations available for this segment. You will be able to see all the Destinations that your company owns or has permission to use for that Collaboration. 

3. Configure the export

When you select the Snowflake Beacon Table Destination, the pop up will show additional options and the fields that were left editable at push time here.

At this stage, you can select if Column Mapping is required. You must do Column mapping if the names of the columns in your Snowflake Table are not the same as the ones you’re exporting from your Snowflake Beacon. 

Simply select an export column from the dropdown list and then enter the name of the corresponding column on your Snowflake Table. 

Important: If the column names on that table are case-sensitive, the values in the destination must be provided surrounded by double quotes. Please refer to Snowflake’s documentation for more information.

You do not need to populate all columns in the table in snowflake but you need at least as many columns as you’re exporting.

4. Click Export Activation Segment to initiate the export to your chosen destination.