Audits

The Adestra audit system provides verification of distribution numbers to third party companies. Typically this will be a report to show advertisers.

Adestra has a partnership with two audit companies, BPA and ABC, who can receive reports automatically via Adestra. Depending on your account set-up, you can send to one or both of them simultaneously.

On this page:

Basic Information

Caution: Audits are time sensitive. You need to run an audit within 14 days of a completed launch, or the audit will not run successfully.

You can mark individual launches for audit during the Test and Launch stage of launching a campaign, or it can be applied retrospectively to past launches, meaning that you can backdate the delivery logs if you need to.

The audit file that gets sent is zipped CSV file containing a copy of the delivery logs for launches, which will be sent three days after the launch is complete, whether it's a manual or a scheduled launch. The BPA receive the file to their FTP site, and ABC receive the file as an email.

Tip: You can find out the audit status for a launch from the Launches tab of a campaign, in the page tab bar at the top of the screen.

The page will default to the Previous Launches tab, where you will be able to view all previous launches for that campaign. Within the launch list is an 'Audit' column, which displays whether that launch has been marked for audit or not.

Mark a Launch for Audit

At launch

In the final stage of the Test and Launch process, the Setup Launch page will display the audit options.

Depending on your account set-up, you may see one or both auditor check boxes, and they may be preselected for you.

You will need to enter an issue number, which is the audit reference used by the auditor to identify the individual launch in the audit data sent.

In the case of Recurring Campaigns, the issue number is used multiple times, but a new audit number is used each time.

After Launch

To mark a launch for audit retrospectively, you will need to view the launch in the Previous Lauches tab in the campaign 'Launches' area.

Select the relevant launch by clicking the 'Created Date' link, then the 'Add Audit' link. This will display the audit options.

Again depending on your account set-up, you may see one or both auditor check boxes, and they may be preselected for you. Enter an issue number, and click the 'Add Audit' button.

The system runs daily and, providing the launch is complete, will send the same day. If the launch is not yet complete, the audit will send three days after it is complete.

View an Existing Audit

If a launch has been marked for audit, you can view details of the launch by clicking on the relevant 'Created Date' in the launches list. This will direct you to the launch information page.

Within this page is the 'Audits' section, which will show any existing audits for the launch.

  • ID: our internal audit ID number
  • Issue number: the reference entered when the audit record is added, which identifies the launch in audit data
  • Auditor: which of the two audit companies the audit is for
  • Auditor Email: the audit email address
  • Email Sent: the timestamp for the email sent
  • Auditor FTP: the audit FTP destination
  • FTP Sent: the timestamp for the FTP file sent

From here you can click on the audit issue number to view the audit information.

It is also possible to send an email copy of the audit data using the 'Email audit data' link. The email will be send to the address of the current Adestra user.

Delete an Audit

The option to delete and audit will only be available if the audit has not already been sent.

To delete an audit, you will need to click on the audit issue number to view the audit information page and then press delete audit.

FAQ

What will the file send to the ABC and BPA contain?

A file called <account_name>_audit_<audit_id>.tar.gz, which contains a single CSV file called launches.csv. The <audit_id> refers to the system id for the audit not the audit reference.

The launches.csv file contains one row per event, per contact for the launch. The file has the following columns in the following order.

CSV Column Contents
email The email address of the contact.
amf_id The Adestra contact id.
issue_date The date of launch for the campaign, formatted as DD/MM/YYYY
campaign_name The Adestra campaign name.
issue_number The Audit Issue Number, entered by the Adestra user when creating the Audit record, either at the time of Launch or after Launch.
text_size_kb Size of the plain text version in KB.
html_size_kb Size of the HTML version in KB.
display_label The display label for the event.
timestamp The time of the event, formatted as DD/MM/YYYY HH24:MI:SS

We only send back rows for the following events:

Display Label The Event Description
Sent Campaign To mark if we've attempted to send to the contact.
Over Quota When the recipient’s inbox is full.
Invalid Domain When the domain or the company do not exist, this could be because of a typing error.
Invalid User When the user does not exist at the domain, for example if a recipient has left the company.
Other Bounce Where the recipient's server has returned a message to Adestra without giving an explanation of why the email will not be delivered.

When can ABC and BPA expect to receive my audit?

The Audit process starts at 21:30 each evening and will send an audit file three days after a completed launch. Depending on the size of your launch, ABC and BPA can expect to receive your audit a few hours after the process begins.