SiteCatalyst: Firing multiple events and Event Serialization

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The following describes the changes available in the SiteCatalyst templates released on Sept 2, 2015. The Tag names are "SiteCatalyst" and "SiteCatalyst AppMeasurement for JS."

How do I know that I have the latest template that has this feature?

At the top of the template is a date (timestamp) that begins with the template ID and the date in format YYYYMMDD. This feature is added in "20150827" template.

//~~tv:19004.h27.20150827

Note:

• This timestamp is the tag template update date (which will be earlier than the date this template is made available in production).
• You would also expect this feature in a later template (e.g. 20150929)

Event Serialization

If I have "myevent" in my data layer and this is mapped to "click:event5" in mapping toolbox then the following would trigger "event5" with the serialization number 12345.

utag.view( { myevent : "click:12345" } );

Firing Multiple Events

The updated template allows for two or more events by adding another mapping and using a comma-separated list of strings in the data layer. In the example below, we have "product-view:prodView" in mapping and also add a "product-view" string in the list of values in our data layer variable "myevent".

utag.view( { myevent : "product-view,click:12345" } );

Because Javascript is nice enough to convert arrays to strings, and add a comma in the process, the following array works the same as a comma-separated list in a string:

utag.view( { myevent : ["product-view", "click:12345"] } );

Note:

• If you expect spaces in your mapped variable then use an Extension to clean up the values, the template will not do any variable value manipulation (i.e. no string clean up).
• If there is a list of values and multiple matches in mapping, the event will only fire once (i.e. only added once to s.events).
• In the blog link below, it appears Adobe has another way of doing event serialization server-side. This feature appears to no longer be needed in the implementation and can be done with reporting configuration in Adobe's UI.

Additional Reading

• Event Serialization inside Omniture Sitecatalyst
• Event Serialization
• Say hello to On-Demand Metrics in Adobe Analytics