Census integration: user guide

Set up and use Census to send in data to Chameleon

Sonia Schiau avatar
Written by Sonia Schiau
Updated over a week ago

With our Census integration, you can send enriched data to Chameleon and leverage it when targeting, personalizing, and analyzing your Experiences. Ensure you have the right attributes to deliver contextual Experiences to users.

You can set up Chameleon as a data destination in Census to create hyper-targeted Segments and deliver a better user experience.


Availability & Usage

๐Ÿ” Available for Startup, Growth, Enterprise

๐Ÿ“ Data ready to use in Tours, Tooltips, Microsurveys, Launchers


How does this integration work?

Census is a Reverse ETL platform that helps sync your warehouse data back to your tool stack so teams can easily use it to make better decisions and improve efforts.

Through Reverse ETL you can easily copy the data you have in your central warehouse to your tools (e.g. Twilio Segment, Salesforce, Zendesk, Mixpanel) and leverage it across other tools. Get enriched data that is combined from all your other tools, and leverage it in Chameleon.


Setting up the integration

You can leverage Census HTTP requests to send data to Chameleon and use it to create better product guidance. To configure this, you'll need to add an HTTP destination using an API key generated in Chameleon.

๐Ÿ‘‰ View your API tokens in your Dashboard or Learn more about the Chameleon API.

Create a destination

โถ In your Census dashboard navigate to "Destinations" and find the HTTP request option.

โท Next, fill in the details of your HTTP request. Name your destination and enter the Base URL for the Chameleon API (https://api.chameleon.io)

โธ Generate a new API token in Chameleon and copy it to your clipboard.

โน Click to add a header, name the header api-key , and paste in your token. You can also check the box indicating it's a secret --hiding it in our UI if you or anyone else attempts to edit this connection later on.

โบ Finally, click Connect.

Create your sync

Next, head over to the Sync section of your Census dashboard to add a sync between your warehouse data and Chameleon.

  • Pick your data warehouse or the source that contains the data you want to sync

  • Select the 'Chameleon HTTP Request destination' you created earlier

  • Add the specific endpoint Census should use to create contacts in Chameleon (you can find these in our developer docs)

  • Choose a request trigger

  • Choose a trigger that you want Census to monitor in your source data.

  • Select the number of records per request. You can also batch records for better performance -- check out this doc from Census with details on how to do it.

  • Choose the user_id (ideal) or email as the sync key in the next step

  • Pick the POST request method to sync data to Chameleon or update existing records.

  • Pick the JSON payload type next

  • Next, define your JSON payload -- Census provides 3 different ways to do this. In this case, we picked the Multiple source columns to map specific properties; check out more details on the other methods from Census's docs.

โ„น Make sure you map the UID and pass it to Chameleon separately, even though you'll have a User_ID already mapped by Census.

  • Next, you can also configure rate limits so that Census respects them when sending data.

  • Finally, test your sync and save it. You can check to see if your data was sent as expected, from the "API Inspector tab" in your sync configuration.


How to use it?

You'll find data sent through Census as filters when creating your audience in Chameleon. You can also leverage user properties to personalize the Experiences you create for a unique user experience.

This way you can connect valuable data across your tool stack and put it to work when guiding users in your product.

โ„น Ensure you are sending the same uid to both Census and Chameleon for your users to be identified correctly.

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