The Analytics Edge Connector for Constant Contact now (2024-06-07) supports the latest (version 3) API from Constant Contact. Many things have changed between the older (version 2) API, and this document gives a brief overview of the differences between them, and how Analytics Edge has changed how used them.
Note that the Constant Contact connector is the first connector released by Analytics Edge (in 2014) and has undegone only minor changes over the years. The new release is a significant update in both the user interface as well as how the data is processed and presented.
Reference IDs and Data Structure Changes
Constant Contact uses different ID numbers in the new API to reference the various data elements (contacts, email campaigns, links, etc). They also structure the data differently; for example, a resend of a campaign in v2 was issued a new campaign ID, but in v3 the campaign is split into 2 campaign activities with a primary email and a resend activity.
The old connector exposed a lot of the inner workings and forced users to cross reference IDs between queries to piece together the information they wanted. The update does a lot of this work behind the scenes; for example, campaign reports actually trigger one API call to get the activities for a campaign, then multiple calls for each activity and additional queries for activity details if needed, merging the data into a single response.
Field Names and Order
The old connector exposed the raw field names from the API (e.g. first_name, last_name) while the update provides more presentable field names (e.g. First Name, Last Name).
The order of the fields between the various queries changed according to how the API delivered them, which tended to change depending on the data. This could cause problems in report formating, forcing additional steps to reorder the fields in a specific way. The update controls the field order and appearance in most cases.
Accounts
The account authentication used by Constant Contact has changed with the new API, so the connector manages separate stored accounts for the v2 and v3 APIs. This means sepaarte Accounts wizards. The new login process uses Oauth, so the login process is a little different.
The old Accounts wizard allowed you to get information about a selected account or a list of available accounts — this extra functionality has been moved to a new Account Information wizard. This wizard allows you to select between using v2 or v3 accounts.