A new OAuth 2.0 Marketing Cloud connector in Einstein Analytics

This year Marketing Cloud made some changes to their authentication, the connector we had and still have in Einstein Analytics used the old authentication. Now if you have an installed packed from before summer of 2019 you are okay to use that with the connector we have in Einstein Analytics. But what if you do not have an old installed package to use? Well, in that case, we have a new version of the marketing cloud connector using OAuth 2.0. I will in this blog demonstrate how to set the new connector up, but if you want a broader view of Marketing Cloud data in Einstein Analytics please have a look at my Marketing Smart blog series.

Marketing Cloud settings

As I mentioned in the introduction of this blog we do need to have an installed package created to get the keys that are needed for the connector as well as defining how and what data we can grab in Marketing Cloud.

Log in to Marketing Cloud and make sure you have the correct permissions to create an installed package. In the top right corner, you will see your name, click on it and choose “Setup” in the dropdown menu. In the setup, you will see a menu to the left. Under “Platform Tools” click on the heading called “Apps” and then select “Installed Packages”. Now you get a “New” button in the top left corner, that will allow you to create a new installed package.

Click on the new button to get started with the package. In the pop-up give your installed package a name and possibly a description. Once done click “Save”.

Now your installed package has been created, but we need to add a component, which will give us the keys we need. So click on the “Add Component” to get started on that.

It’s a step by step guide to set up the component and the first we have to do is define the type. Go ahead and select the option “API Integration” and click “Next”.

The next step is to choose the integration type which will be the “Server-to-server”, so select that and click on “Next”.

The final step is to choose the properties of the integration. Make sure you have the following selected before you click “Save”.

• Read for “List and Subscribers”
• Read and write for “Data Extensions”
• Read, and write for “Marketing Cloud Connect”
• Read for “Accounts”
• Read for “Users”

Note: Read for Accounts and Users is an additional requirement in the Summer ’22 release.

With the component added we are ready to move to Einstein Analytics and set up the connector. But before doing that keep Marketing Cloud open, we do need a few things from the installed package; the client id, the client secret, and the SOAP Base URL.

Enable the connector

Moving to Einstein Analytics navigate to Analytics Studio and Data Manager. Once you are in the data manager click on “Connect” in the menu to the left. If you don’t see the option make sure that you have enabled Data Sync and Connections in the analytics settings in the Salesforce setup. This step is described in the first part of the Marketing Smart blog series.

You will see an overview of all the connectors you have enabled for your org. In order to get the Marketing Cloud connector, click on the blue “Connect to Data” button in the top right corner. In the dialog box click on the first tile that says “Add Connection” whereafter you select the tile that says “Salesforce Marketing Cloud Contacts OAuth 2.0 Connector”.

The next thing to do is enter all the credentials in order to establish a connection to your marketing cloud environment. First of all, give your connection a name, developer name, and description. This can be anything you want, but make sure it makes sense as this is what you will see in the list of connectors.

The “ClientSecret” and the “ClientId” you need to grab from the installed package we created previously. So copy and paste that from Marketing Cloud to the connector. Before we test and save the connection, we need to modify the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Url. Below you can see the default URL.

https://mcxxx.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/etframework.wsdl

From the installed package in Marketing Cloud copy the SOAP Base URI. Now replace the first part of the default Url up til /etframwork.wsdl with the SOAP Base URI and click “Save & Test”. You can see the full Url I have used below, which obviously unique for my environment, the highlighted part is what I replaced.

https://mc3f4m6tsgmxz2862chq5qcr2k4q.soap.marketingcloudapis.com/etframework.wsdl

That’s it. You can now click on the newly established connector to add data extensions from Marketing Cloud, so they are available to use in your dataflow or recipe.

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