135 Release API Changes

Manage Reply Mail Management

The API exposes all aspect of reply mail management to the API. You can create and update RMM settings from the web service API.

Send Profile and Delivery Profiles for Send Definitions

The API now exposes the sender profile and delivery profile as part of a send definition.

Retrieve Audience of Send Definition

You can now retrieve the audience of a send definition using the API.

Schedule a Send Definition

You can now schedule a send definition for a future time using the API.

API Support for Decimal Data Type

You can now create decimal data type fields via the API. The API also retains the decimal data type during retrieve calls.

ImportDefinition Calls Support DateTimeLocale Property

When making calls using the ImportDefinition object, you can specify a value for the DateFormattingLocale property. Using a Retrieve call, you can also determine which DateFormattingLocale value was set for the ImportDefinition object.

Changes in API Objects and Properties

Respect of UTC and Time Zone Date Formats for Inbound Web Service Operations

The web service API now normalizes all incoming dates and times to server time. This includes the UTC time format. You can set time zone information in your account and have it resolve correctly with the ExactTarget application.

Enterprise 2.0 Account Management Features (beta)

The new API enhancements allow you to manage business units, account users, roles, and permission sets via the API. You can use API calls to create, retrieve, update, or delete these entities. Note that you can only manage permission sets at this time; granular control of individual permissions will be introduced in future updates.

Email Content Enhancements

You can use the API to retrieve content areas from the ExactTarget application. This allows you to create a content editing interface for use by your company or account users. This enhancement supports retrieval of static content areas associated with an email. You can do this by adding the ContentArea property to the SimpleFilterPart object. This enhancement does not work with dynamic content, and you cannot affect email layout types with this property.

The API also allows you to send text-only emails. These emails override subscriber preferences and send only text emails with no HTML formatting to all subscribers on a list. Dynamic content does not work with text-only emails, although you can use AMPscript to insert personalization strings and other content.

Publication and Suppression List Support using ListClassification

You can use the API to create, retrieve, update, or delete publication and suppression lists for your email sends. This allows you greater control over who receives your messages and uses the flexibility of the API service to better manage your subscribers. You cannot add individual subscribers to suppression lists using the API.

Import Definition Enhancements

The API enhancements also introduce a new type of import called ColumnBased. A column-based import has a control column that determines if records are added, updated and deleted. This flexibility makes it easy to support delta file processes.

Other enhancements that allow data of different formats to be imported include the ability to change the end-of-line representation of a file. You can set this representation using the EndOfLineRepresentation property on the EmailSendDefinition object. You can either set this property globally or per send. You cannot use slashes in this character, and this property does not support subscriber lists.

You can change the value of the representation of what NULL data is. You can set this at a global level or on a per-import-definition basis. Set this using the NullRepresentation on the ImportDefinition object. This does not function on subscriber lists.

Finally, you can force your imports activities to import double quotes. 

Data Extension Imports using DataExtensionObjects

The API now handles over-the-wire imports of data into a data extension in a more efficient manner. Batches of DataExtensionObjects are batched upon import and process more quickly, improving the response time of the API call.

Customer Key Allowed on the List and Account objects

You can now use a customer key to work with marketing lists via the API when used . You can create, retrieve, update, and delete using the customer key. 

File Triggers (beta)

You can use file triggers (FileTrigger) to cause the API to take action by placing files with manifests on an FTP location. These file triggers look for the presence of new files and take the appropriate action once the files have been located. File triggers are available in limited release and require authorization by ExactTarget to use.

Web Service Authentication

Currently, the ExactTarget application uses plaintext SOAP username tokens over SSL for API calls. The API enhancements allow you to encrypt the username token using a certificate. You can use this encryption to secure your SOAP messages at the message level.

Changes in API Objects and Properties

The following new objects, properties, and relationships have been added since the last API release: