Enable Management Center marketing features

To enable the Management Center Marketing tool and certain features that support behavioral marketing, modify several parameters in the WebSphere Commerce configuration file. We must also ensure that there is a mechanism in place to update the marketing registry each time the marketing data is propagated from the authoring or staging database to the production database.

Procedure

1. Open the WebSphere Commerce configuration file in a text editor.

2. For sites that have migrated from WebSphere Commerce Accelerator marketing, change the configuration file to point to the marketing services that support Management Center:

   1. Find the <Marketing> element. It looks like the following example:

      <Marketing version="Classic"/>

   2. Change the version attribute of the <Marketing> element so that the value is Dialog. If you set the version attribute to Dialog, we must use the Management Center Marketing tool for all marketing functions that it supports.

3. Enable the persistent sessions feature and personalization ID feature. These features are required to support behavioral marketing.

   1. Find the <PersonalizationId> element. It looks like the following example:

      <PersonalizationId enable="false"/>

   2. Ensure that the enable attribute is set to true. Depending on the site, this attribute might already be enabled, and require no change.

   3. Find the <PersistentSession> element. It looks like the following example:

      <PersistentSession cookieExpiry="30" display="false" enable="true"/>

   4. Ensure that:

      • The enable attribute is set to true.

      • The cookieExpiry value is a positive number. This number represents the number of days sessions are persisted for a customer.

        To enable persistent sessions, change set the cookieExpiry value to a positive number.

4. Enable the following marketing listeners: the SensorEventListener and ExperimentEvaluationEventListener. These listeners must be enabled to support some behavioral marketing features and to gather marketing statistics for marketing experiments:

   1. Find the following string:

      compClassName="com.ibm.commerce.marketing.dialog.trigger.SensorEventListener"

   2. Below the string, ensure that the enable attribute is set to true, as shown in the following example:

      <component
          compClassName="com.ibm.commerce.marketing.dialog.trigger.SensorEventListener"
          enable="true" name="SensorEventListener">
          <property display="false">
              <start enabled="true"/>
          </property>
      </component>

   3. To improve performance, we can limit the SensorEventListener to monitor events raised only by the stores module. Doing so causes events performed in business tools on behalf of customers such as a CSR registering a new user, or a CSR placing an order for a customer, to not be handled by the marketing services for Management Center. To do so:

      1. Search for the <module element that contains the attribute name="CommerceAccelerator".

      2. In the <InitParameters element, add the attribute recordable="false". The recordable attribute removes event listeners for each specified module that we are working with that contains an InitParameters element. You can typically set this attribute for unused modules. It cannot be set at the server level.

      3. Repeat the two previous steps for <module elements that contain the attributes name="SiteAdministration", name="OrganizationAdministration", and name="WorkspaceAdministration".

   4. Find the following string:

      compClassName="com.ibm.commerce.marketingcenter.events.runtime.ExperimentEvaluationECEventListenerImpl"

   5. Below the string, ensure that the enable attribute is set to true, as shown in the following example:

      <component
          compClassName="com.ibm.commerce.marketingcenter.events.runtime.ExperimentEvaluationECEventListenerImpl"
          enable="true" name="Experiment Evaluation Event Listener">
          <property display="false">
              <start enabled="true"/>
          </property>
      </component>

5. Save our changes.

What to do next

Package our changes to the WebSphere Commerce configuration file for deployment.

Make sure there is a mechanism in place to update the marketing registry each time the marketing data is propagated from the authoring or staging database to the production database using the stagingprop utility. This additional step is required so that marketing changes display on the production site after data propagation.
Next topic: Reviewing settings in the marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml) for Management Center