Explaining Tealium and contacting template developers?

[lars_rothberg_h]

For well over a year, my office have supported a site with Tealium on a client site. The different departments within the client organization are now aware of this installation we get quite a lot requests. Since this is a global site we get requests for working with different affiliate networks display partners around the work. Here after simply referred to as "partners" Often we notice that of course many of the partners do have a Tag available in Tealium and we always encourage using it when it's available, but then it begins to get really interesting. 1. We will often get a tracking pixel, jscript embedded, but the behavior implemented in the template deviates. Either the Tealium template is deprecated, or the tag that the partner want to have implemented is. That leads to the question, who creates these templates? who specifies them? Often I would very much like to have the dialog with whoever ordered the template and fix it, instead of continuously deploy workarounds by fixing it through extensions or directly modify the partners templates. 2. Does someone have a crash course "What is Tealium?" that one can send out to partners. After the initial delivery, we often gets challenged by someone from the partner that they cannot see their tracking pixel in "view source" and would like to know when we intend to add it. After that point, long email chains or conference calls starts. Having a crash course for a person who is used to use "view source" and get the basic understanding of Tealium or TMS for that matter would greatly help.

[Clint · Accepted solution]

Hi Lars, for the first part of your question (who owns templates). The answer is that Tealium authors the tag templates within Tealium iQ. We have over 700 vendor tags under management so it's quite a workload to keep up with. The fastest route to getting a tag template updated is to contact your account manager. We will generally ask for the updated code snippet and vendor documentation so that our team has the most current and relevant information for updating a deprecated template. I'm not sure what the current turn around is so that would be a question for your account manager. As for the crash course... There is this series: https://community.tealiumiq.com/series/16800-tealium-university-on-demand which is a set of videos explaining core concepts of tag management. There is this series: https://community.tealiumiq.com/series/5571-getting-started-with-tealium-iq-tms which is a more in-depth look at the basics of tag management (and includes the videos above). Keep in mind that most content here is currently behind a log in gate so your partners would need access to your profile(s) in order to gain access to TLC. Your account manager may have a shareable document explaining tag management so don't hesitate to ask. There are also our weekly webinars and Tealium University events.

[lars_rothberg_h]

Thanks for the feedback Clint, So what's the process around getting a template updated? I am guessing that the job of adding a template is some how anchored within the organization that the tag is created for. Will Tealium be reaching out to them if we put in a request? Also while on the topic of managing templates, now that it's become clear to me that these are indeed managed by Tealium. It seems like there is huge variation on how very similar tags are executed. We almost always need to use the "Manage Templates" and check the implementation in order to figure out how mapped variables are taken as input and what hoops we need to jump through in order to potentially override any of them by the use of extensions.

[Clint]

Hey Lars, as described above the process for requesting either a new tag be added to our marketplace or an update to an existing tag template is a simple matter of reaching out to your Account Manager. Generally speaking, the work needed is all internal to Tealium without involvement from the vendor. We will need the updated vendor tag code and documentation and take it from there. For your follow up comment, I'd recommend asking your account manager for a working session. I'm not privy to your specific implementation but working with a Solutions engineer to review how you're currently managing inconsistencies in tag configurations, you may find there are more effective and/or efficient ways to accomplish what you're trying to do.

[son_hoang]

Additionally, for people who are used to viewing source to verify their tags, I would encourage them to learn to verify tag deployments using network tools, like Chrome's network monitor or HTTPFox for Firefox. As for what Tealium is or does, there are a lot of white papers that touch on different aspects of Tealium and TMSes in general here: http://tealium.com/resources/?type=whitepaper