Marketing Cloud Journey Builder Entry Event not evaluating any Contacts for entry

Question

I'm trying to create a new Shared Entry Event for my Interactions in Marketing Cloud Journey Builder and not having any luck getting them to work. I've scoured the documentation, and related Q&As here, but to no avail. Here's where I'm currently at:

1. I've created a new Sendable Data Extension that contains SubscriberKey and EmailAddress attributes along with my own attributes. SubscriberKey is the primary key.

2. I've linked my DE to the Contacts data schema as a Population in Contact Builder, from ContactKey <=> Subscriber Key. When I view the DE details, it DOES show up with Use as root checked (even though this checkbox is supposed to be deprecated).

3. In Contacts Configuration, I've added my DE and its EmailAddress attribute to the Email Address channel order, in the 1st position.

4. In Journey Builder, I've created a new shared Contact Event, with my DE as the Entry Source, NO filters (so all new records should enter), and turned it on to Test mode.

5. I then hit the API, first /contacts/v1/contacts so that I can create the Contact, with valid Email Address and Email Demographics, then with the same contact/subscriber key, I hit /interaction/v1/events with the rest of my DE data.

6. I get success responses from the API calls, and a new eventInstanceId back (where can I look this up??!), and if I check All Contacts in Contact Builder, I can see the valid Email contact record AND the associated data in my DE.

7. However, when I go back to Journey Builder Event Administration and view Event Performance, it shows 0 contacts evaluated for entry.

I've also tried manually creating/importing contact records, then firing the event with an Automation, but it also still shows 0 contacts evaluated for entry afterwards (and I really want to just use the API for my integration).

Can anyone see something I may have missed in my steps above? Happy to provide additional screenshots/details as needed.

Answer 1

The answer is: there's nothing wrong with the steps I wrote. Marketing Cloud was just not working properly for an entire day of work. I logged in the next day after the answer/comments from @vikal, and started testing again, and it's now working.

Answer 2

The Steps you follow even i did the same,and although records entered the Journey and Interactions happen fine,still the View Event Results link was showing Total Contacts/Accepted Contacts both as 0. I did this Yesterday,but now when i again check it Total Contacts are still 0(As i haven't put any criteria for evaluation),but Accepted Contacts are number of records which get entered into Journey. Seems like there is delay in Updates on link.Need to figure out why this delay happen.

Answer 3

While Contacts are now being injected into your Journey, I assume you are firing the Event using Automation Studio as the request payload you provided for the /interaction/v1/events method above should not work.

Note that the EventDefinitionKey is the actual Event Definition Key of the Event and has the syntax ContactEvent-{{guidValue}}. You can retrieve the Event Definition Key from the Events page in Journey Builder.

Secondly, EstablishContactKey is pretty much redundant here and I'd suggest setting it to false as you indicate that the Contact already exists as part of the Population, so you don't need to create a new Contact in your Contact model (which is what this option does). I don't believe it will do any harm keeping it there (it shouldn't create a duplicate Contact) but you may want to consider changing this to false. Here's what your request should look like with an example EventDefinitionKey value.

{
   "ContactKey":"[email protected]",
   "EventDefinitionKey":"ContactEvent-7046a1e0-ed23-a392-75f9-f3fe6b980e70t",
   "EstablishContactKey":false,
   "data":{
      "SubscriberKey":"[email protected]",
      "EmailAddress":"[email protected]",
      "FirstName":"Francis22",
      "LastName":"Li22",
      "Company":"Wrap Media",
      "Address":"275 Sacramento St, 4th Floor",
      "AptUnitSuite":"",
      "City":"San Francisco",
      "State":"CA",
      "ZipCode":94111
   }
}