How custom activity runs on journey status

Question

I am quite new for custom activity.

I am unable to understand , how custom activity runs, when we activated journey what would be the method that will execute the method.

Can we segregate the code on the basis of journey status, Actually we want to insert some data from iframe before the journey is activated and once the journey is activated , I want to fetch the data from data extension and create a JSON with journey data and send that JSON to third party server using REST API

Can anyone help me to understand the flow of custom activity.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can insert some data from the iframe before the journey is activated by saving data inputs in the config.js - inArguments. When you click "Done" in the iframe, the Postmonger event connection.on('clickedNext', save) will be fired and you can save the inputs:

customActivity.js

function save() {
    var message = $('#idMessage').val();

    payload['arguments'].execute.inArguments = [{
        "tokens": authTokens,
        "smsMessage": message,
        "phone":"{{Contact.Attribute." + '\"' + eventDefinitionKey + '\"' + ".\"Contact:MobilePhone\"}}",
        "key":"{{Contact.Key}}"
    }];

    payload['metaData'].isConfigured = true;
    connection.trigger('updateActivity', payload);
}

Once the journey is activated, the Execute function will run and there you can get your inputs from the inArguments.

server.js

app.post('/journeybuilder/execute', (req, res) => {
    verifyJwt(req.body, Pkg.options.salesforce.marketingCloud.jwtSecret, (err, decoded) => {
        //verification error -> unauthorized request
        if (err) {
            console.error(err);
            return res.status(401).end();
        }
        
        if (decoded && decoded.inArguments && decoded.inArguments.length > 0) {

                var phone = decoded.inArguments[0].phone;
                var message = decoded.inArguments[0].smsMessage;
                var data = { 
                        auth_id: 'xxxxxxx',
                        auth_secret: 'xxxxxxxx',
                        message: message,
                        phone: phone };
                sendSms (data);
                
        } else {
            console.error('inArguments invalid.');
            return res.status(400).end();
        }
    });
    return res.status(200).json({success: true});
});

If you want to use data coming from your data extension you can use merge fields:

• Data Binding: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.mc-apis.meta/mc-apis/how-data-binding-works.htm

• Full End-to-end demo of creating a Journey Builder activity: https://youtu.be/BbaUkhdtqTQ

• Accompanying git repo: https://github.com/devsutd/journey-builder-activity-template