Ingress is a process that imports data from external source systems, masters the data, and stores it in MDM SaaS assets. When you get started with MDM SaaS for the first time, to onboard your initial data, you must ingress it. You can continue to ingress data incrementally to be in sync with the source systems.
For example, you work for an enterprise that manages customer data in Salesforce. You subscribe to MDM SaaS to master the customer data in Salesforce. To get started with MDM SaaS, ingress the initial data from Salesforce. You can then continue to ingress data incrementally into MDM SaaS so that the data in MDM SaaS is in sync with the Salesforce data.
You can import new records and update field values, delete field group entries in record sections, or delete source records.
For example, you can import a new record, update only the home address, or delete the billing address of existing records.
Note: To update field values in record sections, you must include all the field values of that particular section.
You can also ingress records with validation errors. However, ensure that you purge the existing data before data validation is enabled and then ingress records that have validation errors.
You can use business IDs, which are unique identifiers that MDM SaaS uses to identify records, to ingress data. When the ingress data contains business IDs, the records merge directly with the master records, and they don't go through the match and merge process. For example, if you specify the business IDs of existing source records, the records merge with the master records to which the source records contribute. The records are added as source records and are assigned new business IDs. If you specify the business IDs of existing master records, the records become source records for the master records, and they merge directly with the master records. For more information about using business IDs to ingress data, see Ingress data with business ID.
You can exclude source records from participating in the match process by specifying them as not ready for match during the ingress process. You might want to exclude records that belong to a specific source system or records that contain incomplete data.