SSJS WSProxy code is unable to access SFMC object - AutomationActivityInstance

Question

I am trying to work on SSJS script to fetch the details about the automation activities. I found an object called AutomationActivityInstance - https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/marketing/marketing-cloud/guide/automationactivityinstance.html .This object has all the information I need. I want to fetch the start time & end time of the activity in an automation.

Here is my SSJS

<script runat="server">

Platform.Load("Core","1");

  var prox = new Script.Util.WSProxy();

  var cols = ["Name","StartTime","CompletedTime"];
  var filter = {
      Property: "IsActive",
      SimpleOperator: "equals",
      Value: "true"
  };
  var res = prox.retrieve("AutomationActivityInstance", cols, filter);
  
      for (var i = 0; i < res.Results.length; i++) {
      
       //fetch the properties
          var Name = res.Results[i].Name;
          Write ("RES:"+Name);

      }
    
</script>

This code does not return anything. It shows up as blank. Please can anyone point out what I am doing wrong in the code? I want to fetch this data using the object -AutomationActivityInstance.

Or is there any API endpoint that derives the automation activity start & end time?

Answer 1

First, let's see what you would get in the response using Write(Stringify(res)):

{
   "Status":"Error: AutomationActivityInstance is not a valid ObjectType.",
   "RequestID":"abcdefgh-abcd-1234-8b81-9ea00884b879",
   "Results":null,
   "HasMoreRows":false
}

Looks like the API does not recognize this object.

Let's see if we can do retrieve operations on it by checking the documentation: Supported Operations for Objects and Methods

Given that it's not listed, we can only assume we can't access it, but being a bit mistrustful about the documentation, we just do a describe operation to make sure:

var prox = new Script.Util.WSProxy();
var res = prox.describe("AutomationActivityInstance");
Write(Stringify(res));

the results are disappointing:

{
   "RequestID":"abcdefgh-abcd-1234-8b81-9ea00884b879",
   "Results":[null]
}

So no, it does not seem we can work with this object at all - you would get the same response if you looked for Unobtainium.

---

Can we find this data with the REST API?

there's a undocumented automation endpoint (credits go to Gortonington) where you can do a discovery GET request: /automation/v1/rest

In response you will get a collection of all automation routes, but there seems to be none connected to the AutomationActivityInstance, but maybe check for yourself, maybe you will find something useful there.

Answer 2

This is undocumented too but worth to check. "ActivityInstance" looks like the replacement of AutomationActivityInstance. Check for extra info https://charliefay.medium.com/sfmc-automation-studio-api-objects-620ec868239b