How to Refresh an existing Filtered Data Extension without Filter Activity / Automation?

Question

I know that there is the process to create a filter definition, a filter activity and then have these run inside an automation to automatically update filters.

But this means that you need to completely from scratch create:

1. The Target DE
2. The Filter Definition (logic + Source DE)
3. The Filter Activity Interaction (Filter Definition + Target DE)
4. An Automation to run the Filter Activity Interaction

This seems like a LOT of things, especially since you cannot use any existing filtered DEs you created without a Filter Activity.

Is there a process that you can directly refresh a Filtered Data Extension that does not have a Filter Activity associated with it? Potentially via API so that it does not need to be reliant on an Automation in platform (SFMC)?

Answer 1

Surprisingly, there is a public facing, undocumented endpoint that will let you refresh your filtered Data Extensions as long as you have the Object ID of the Filtered DE.

Below is a quick overview on how to use this endpoint, but for more details see a post I made about this.

First point of order is how do we get this ObjectID?

GET /data/v1/customobjectdata/key/{{yourFilteredDEKey}}/rowset?$pageSize=1
Host: {{yourSubDomain}}.rest.marketingcloudapis.com
Authorization: Bearer {{oauthToken}}

Now I know this is supposed to be to return a rowset, but as there is no REST endpoint to get Data Extension properties, this was best I could find. With the pageSize set to 1, it makes the call very light processing.

Response:

{
    "links": {
        "self": "/v1/customobjectdata/token/{{yourFilteredDEKey}}/rowset?$page=1",
        "next": "/v1/customobjectdata/token/{{yourFilteredDEKey}}/rowset?$page=2"
    },
    "requestToken": "XXXXXXX",
    "tokenExpireDateUtc": "XXXXXXXX",
    "customObjectId": "{{myCustomObjectID}}",
    "customObjectKey": "{{myCustomObjectKey}}",
    "pageSize": 1,
    "page": 1,
    "count": X,
    "items": [
        {
            "keys": {
                "myKey": "00544"
            },
            "values": {
                "Field1": "40.815400000",
                "Field2": "-73.045600000",
                "Field3": "0.220696498"
            }
        }
    ]
}

So from there you just grab the 'customObjectID' in the response and move to the cool new endpoint:

POST /email/v1/filteredCustomObjects/{{myObjectID}}/refresh
Host: {{yourSubDomain}}.rest.marketingcloudapis.com
Authorization: Bearer {{oauthToken}}

When you plug your objectID into the above it should respond with something like:

{
    "id": "XXXXXXXX",
    "filterActivityInstance": {
        "id": "XXXXXXXX",
        "asyncID": 8675309
    }
}

Which shows that the DE refresh was successfully started and is now in progress.