Administration, Data Hygiene, and Troubleshooting
Administration covers users, roles, and permissions (Adobe Admin Console and product profiles), sandboxes (logical isolation for environments/teams), and dataset/schema management. A frequent trap: assuming data in one sandbox is visible in another - it is not; sandboxes isolate schemas, datasets, identities, and profiles. Another: permissions are role-based via product profiles, so a user may see the UI but lack permission to create schemas or activate destinations.
Data hygiene includes: deleting datasets and profiles (with appropriate permissions), managing identity graph hygiene, and handling pseudonymous vs. known identities. Understand dataset expiration and profile expiration settings - they control how long data persists and are a common question when data “disappears.” Also know the Privacy Service for access/deletion requests (GDPR/CCPA), which operates across Experience Platform services.
Troubleshooting is best approached systematically. Typical failure signatures:
- Ingestion failures - schema mismatch, missing identity, malformed file, mapping errors.
- Profile not unifying - missing/shared identity, identity namespace not marked as identity, merge policy.
- Audience not populating - evaluation schedule, PQL error, data not in profile store.
- Activation blocked - governance policy, consent, mapping, destination auth.
Rule of thumb: diagnose from the bottom up - data (ingested? mapped? identified?) → profile (unified? merge policy?) → audience (evaluated? schedule?) → destination (mapped? governed? authenticated?). Each layer has a monitoring surface (dataset activity, profile viewer, audience evaluation, flow runs) you should name in answers.