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Connect Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) and ask Gradial about your audiences and data in plain language. You can find an audience, check its size and readiness, and see what data sits behind it, all from the Gradial task where you are planning the campaign. No data engineer needed. Two more capabilities are opt-in. Gradial can create and activate audiences, and build audiences from your data warehouse. Both ask for your approval before they change anything in Adobe. Access: Must be enabled for your organization. Contact your Gradial team to get access.

What You Can Do

Audience Lookup

Find an audience by exact name or ID, or list the audiences in a sandbox. See status, profile count, last evaluation time, and definition details when Adobe returns them.

Readiness Checks

Before an audience feeds a journey, check qualifying profiles, how many are reachable on a channel such as email or SMS, the identity namespace, evaluation freshness, and destination status.

Dataset and Schema Exploration

Browse the sandbox’s datasets, schemas, classes, and identity namespaces to see what data supports an audience.

Audience Authoring (opt-in)

Create or update an audience, estimate its size, evaluate it on demand, and activate it to a destination, with your approval at each write.

Federated Audience Composition (opt-in)

Read compositions that build audiences from your data warehouse, and create, run, stop, or delete them with your approval.

One Credential for AEP, AJO, and CJA

The same credential can also power Adobe Journey Optimizer and Customer Journey Analytics tasks.

Before You Start

  • An active Adobe Experience Cloud organization with AEP licensed and live
  • Access to the Adobe Developer Console to create a project and generate server-to-server OAuth credentials. An Adobe Admin Console administrator must first add you as a developer on an Experience Platform product profile.
  • A product profile that gives the credential Experience Platform API access, such as AEP-Default-All-Users, plus any profile that carries the permissions you want Gradial to have
  • Your IMS Org ID (it ends in @AdobeOrg) and the sandbox name Gradial should connect to
  • A Gradial organization Administrator role
Adobe controls what the credential can see and change. If an audience, dataset, or write permission is missing, ask your Adobe admin.

How to Connect

1

Create an Adobe Developer project

  1. Go to Adobe Developer Console and sign in with your Adobe ID.
  2. Select your organization from the org switcher.
  3. Click Create new project and give it a name (for example, Gradial - AEP Integration).
2

Add the Experience Platform API

  1. Inside your new project, click Add API.
  2. Filter by Experience Cloud and select Experience Platform.
  3. Choose OAuth Server-to-Server as the authentication type, enter a credential name, and click Next.
  4. Select the product profiles that grant AEP API access, then click Save configured API.
You do not enter OAuth scopes in Gradial. Gradial requests the standard Adobe scopes for you.
3

Copy your credentials

From the project’s OAuth Server-to-Server credential page, copy:
  • Client ID
  • Client Secret
  • Organization ID, which is your IMS org ID
You also need the name of the AEP sandbox you want Gradial to use. In Adobe, a sandbox has a lowercase name and a separate display title. Use the name.
Keep the Client Secret secure. It grants API access to your AEP organization.
4

Add the integration in Gradial

  1. In Gradial, go to Settings → Integrations.
  2. Find the Adobe Experience Platform card and click it.
  3. Fill in the connection details:
  1. If you chose a CJA option, three more fields appear:
  1. Click Save.
There is no URL or token field for AEP. Gradial connects to Adobe’s standard address automatically.
5

Assign to an Environment

  1. Go to Settings → Environments and select the Gradial Environment where AEP should be available.
  2. Add the integration to that Environment.
  3. Repeat for any additional Environments.
If you chose AJO or CJA under Adobe products, those products must also be enabled for your organization, and a CJA option needs Customer Journey Analytics access on the credential’s product profile. See Adobe Journey Optimizer and Customer Journey Analytics.

Using AEP in Gradial

Audience Lookup

Name lookups match the exact audience name, including capitalization. If you only know part of a name, ask Gradial to list the audiences and review them with you. Find existing audiences
“List the audiences in the AEP sandbox and show me any related to retail cart abandonment. For each match, show the audience ID, name, and what it targets, so I can decide whether to reuse one.”
Retrieve an audience
“Retrieve the Adobe audience named retail_cart_abandoners. Show me its audience ID, namespace, status, last evaluation time, profile count, and segment definition details if available.”

Readiness Checks

Check an audience before a journey
“Check whether the retail_cart_abandoners audience is ready to use as the entry audience for an email journey. Show qualifying profiles, how many have an email address, the identity namespace, and when it was last evaluated.”
The result lists any blockers and missing data, so you can see what could not be confirmed. Treat it as evidence to review, not a guarantee, and confirm in AEP before you launch.

Data Exploration and Size Estimates

Explore available data
“List the datasets and schemas in the sandbox that contain cart or purchase activity, and tell me which identity namespaces they use.”
Estimate an audience before creating it
“Estimate how many profiles would qualify for customers in the US who viewed a product in the last 30 days. Do not create the audience.”
Adobe builds estimates from a sample of your profile data, so treat the number as an estimate.

Adobe Target targeting

With the Adobe Target integration connected, ask Gradial to find an AEP audience that has been activated to Adobe Target and use it to target an activity. If the audience is not activated to Adobe Target, or is not visible there yet, the lookup says why.

The AEP audience item

When Gradial retrieves or analyzes an audience, it normally opens an AEP audience item in the side pane. It shows the audience summary (ID, lifecycle, profile counts, last evaluated time), source and identity details, and readiness (qualifying and reachable profiles, destination status, missing data, and blockers). Sections appear only when Gradial has the details.
  • Refresh status re-reads the audience, which helps when Adobe is still evaluating a recent change.
  • Create report asks Gradial for a written report on the audience.
  • Open in AEP appears when Adobe provides a link to the audience.

Audience Authoring

Access: Must be enabled for your organization. Contact your Gradial team to get access. Once enabled, Gradial can write audiences to the connected sandbox. Every write waits for your approval.
  • Reuse or create. Before creating an audience, Gradial is set up to search the sandbox for matching audiences and segment definitions and ask whether you want to reuse one. Look over the candidates it shows you.
  • Create or update. Gradial drafts the definition from your plain-language criteria and is set up to check it with a preview and size estimate before asking you to approve. An update replaces the whole definition in Adobe, so Gradial is set up to read the existing one first and change only what you asked for. Review the change on the approval card.
  • Evaluate on demand. Adobe normally evaluates batch audiences about every 24 hours. Gradial can start an evaluation sooner and follow it to a result. Some organizations, such as those enabled for B2B simplification, only allow scheduled evaluation. The audience is still created and evaluated on Adobe’s schedule.
  • Activate now. Gradial can send an audience to a batch, file-based destination right away, if the destination already has an activation flow with the audience mapped to it. It sends the latest evaluation results, so evaluate first if you need fresh membership. Adobe allows up to 80 audiences per activation run.
Create an audience
“Create an Adobe audience for retail cart abandoners who added items to cart but did not purchase in the last 30 days. Check for existing audiences first, estimate the size, and show me the definition before creating it.”
Evaluate and activate
“Evaluate the retail cart abandoners audience now, and once it finishes, activate it to our email export destination.”

Approvals

Creating, updating, evaluating, and activating each need their own approval. Gradial does not call Adobe until you approve, and the approval covers exactly what you saw.
  • Each approval shows the details of the change: the full definition for a new or updated audience, the audience IDs for an evaluation, or the destinations and audiences for an activation.
  • If a call fails or you want a change, Gradial asks for approval again.
  • Adobe requires unique audience names. If an attempt fails or its outcome is unclear, check Adobe for the audience before you approve a retry, so you do not create a duplicate.

Permissions

Adobe checks each write against the credential’s product profile. Adobe’s access control permission reference lists these permissions: The role with these permissions also needs access to the sandbox Gradial connects to. If Adobe returns a permission error, ask your Adobe administrator to check the matching permission.

Federated Audience Composition

Access: Must be enabled for your organization. Contact your Gradial team to get access. Federated Audience Composition is Adobe’s way to build audiences from data that stays in your own cloud data warehouse. The finished audience is saved in AEP as an external audience that you can use in Real-Time CDP and Journey Optimizer. It is a separate Adobe product with its own license.

What you need in Adobe first

  • Federated Audience Composition purchased, along with Real-Time CDP or Journey Optimizer Prime or Ultimate
  • A warehouse connection and a data model set up in Adobe. Gradial can read these but cannot create them.
  • Your warehouse set to allow Adobe’s Federated Audience Composition server addresses, which Adobe lists when you add a federated database
  • The sandbox’s product profile named ACP_FAC - <sandbox name> - admin, with the integration’s API credential added. In Adobe Admin Console, open Products, select Adobe Experience Platform, open that product profile, go to its API credentials tab, and add the credential from your Developer Console project.

Reading compositions

Gradial starts with a readiness check of the credential, sandbox, and Adobe entitlement, and reports what is missing. It can then:
  • List the database connections and data models in the sandbox
  • List compositions with their run state, query, filter, and saved-audience settings
  • Show the fields of a source schema, so filters use real attribute names
  • Show run logs, which helps explain a failed run
To build new compositions on a data model, keep at least one existing composition on it in Adobe. Gradial shows an audience’s profile count only when Adobe returns one, and otherwise calls it unknown. Adobe may return no count for a while after a run. The count covers profiles that match in Experience Platform, so it can be lower than the rows uploaded from your warehouse.

Creating and running compositions

Create, run, stop, and delete each need their own approval.
  • Create. Writes a composition into your sandbox: a query on an existing data model with one filter condition, saved as an AEP audience with the identity field and namespace you choose. Nothing reaches your warehouse yet. If a composition with the same name or label exists, Gradial stops and shows you the matches.
  • Run. Runs the query against your warehouse. It uses your warehouse’s compute, and your warehouse bills it like any other query. The warehouse account must be allowed to create tables. Runs can take several minutes. The audience appears in AEP when the run starts, and its membership fills in as the run completes.
  • Stop. Ends the run. An audience upload Adobe has already accepted can still finish. Running the composition again reuses the same audience.
  • Delete. Permanently removes the composition, with no undo. The AEP audience from earlier runs stays in AEP, and Gradial cannot delete it.
Gradial does not edit an existing composition. To change one, create a new composition and, once you confirm, delete the old one. Gradial also cannot set up deduplication on a specific key, so set that up in Adobe if you need it. Create a composition
“Using the loyalty data model, create a composition for customers in the Gold or Platinum tier, saved as an AEP audience on the email identity. Show me the full composition before creating it.”

Limits

Other changes Gradial can make. Gradial’s access also covers many other Experience Platform areas, such as datasets, dataflows, destinations, Query Service, identity namespaces, merge policies, data governance, and machine learning models. Gradial uses them when you ask, usually to read or inspect. Changes in these areas do not have the approval step that audience writes and Federated Audience Composition have. Give the credential’s product profile only the permissions you want Gradial to have. For example, leave out Manage Allow List unless you want Gradial to change the Query Service IP allow list. What Gradial never does. Gradial does not delete AEP objects and does not manage Adobe users, roles, permissions, or privacy requests. The only deletion it can perform is removing a Federated Audience Composition, with your approval. Not covered yet
  • Streaming data collection and real-time event streams. Gradial works with batch and processed data.
  • Streaming or API-based destinations for activate-now. Activation covers batch, file-based destinations only.
  • Changing a Federated Audience Composition’s connections or data models. Set these up in Adobe.
  • Adobe Target experiments. Use the Adobe Target integration for A/B and Experience Targeting activities.
Good to know
  • One sandbox per integration. Audiences, datasets, and schemas are sandbox-scoped. To work in more than one sandbox, add one integration per sandbox and tell Gradial which to use. Adobe Target audience lookups need exactly one AEP integration on the same IMS org as your Target integration.
  • New audiences may lack a count. Adobe evaluates batch audiences about every 24 hours. Use Refresh status to check again later.

Troubleshooting

Support

Contact your Gradial onboarding lead or email [email protected] for help with setup.