Do you know you can fix your live website issue using adobe launch.

[Amruthesh_AG]

In today’s fast-paced digital world, website performance and user experience are critical. However, fixing website issues often requires development efforts, QA cycles, and deployment processes that take time and can delay urgent fixes. With Adobe Launch we have an innovative solution that allows for real-time issue resolution without going through the typical development cycle.

Adobe Launch, part of the Adobe Experience Platform that empowers marketers, analysts, and developers to deploy and manage analytics, marketing tags, and scripts with ease. What many might not realize is that Adobe Launch can also be used to quickly fix or bypass certain website issues **without modifying the core site code or waiting for development deployments**. This approach is particularly useful when urgent updates or hot-fixes are needed.

How Adobe Launch Can Fix Website Issues Without Development Efforts:

1. Inject Custom JavaScript or CSS.

   With Adobe Launch, you can inject custom JavaScript or CSS into your website directly through the Launch interface. If there is a bug that requires a script update or a CSS tweak, you can add these changes in real-time and publish them through Launch, bypassing the need to modify the website’s source code.

   **Example Use Case**: 

   - A button on the website stops functioning due to a JavaScript issue. By injecting custom JavaScript through Adobe Launch, you can override the problematic script and restore functionality almost instantly.

 - When you need to enable footer links for mobile you can fix by writing below script.

1. **Debug and Test in Real-Time**:

   Adobe Launch provides robust debugging tools through the **Launch Debugger** browser extension, which allows you to inspect the behavior of your rules and scripts in real-time. This helps in quickly identifying the root cause of the issue, allowing you to apply the right fix faster than through a traditional development cycle.

2. Condition-Based Fixes:

   Sometimes, issues might be isolated to specific browsers, user segments, or regions. Adobe Launch allows you to create condition-based rules, ensuring that fixes are applied only where necessary.

3. An issue affecting only mobile users in a specific region can be addressed with a targeted rule in Launch, without impacting the broader website experience.

4. Immediate Publishing Cycle

   Traditional website development and deployment cycles can take days or even weeks depending on the complexity. With Adobe Launch, once a rule or change is ready, you can publish it to production almost immediately. This reduces the time it takes to resolve issues, allowing for greater agility.

5. A broken link or incorrect tracking on a high-traffic page can be fixed within minutes by deploying a new rule through Launch, saving you from losing valuable data or conversions.

Advantages of Fixing Website Issues Through Adobe Launch:

- **No Need for Developer Involvement**: Since Adobe Launch operates on top of your website, there is no need to involve the development team or wait for the next release cycle. This is particularly beneficial for marketing and analytics teams that need quick fixes.

- **Faster Time to Resolution**: Because you can publish changes directly to production, issues can be resolved within hours rather than days or weeks.

- **No Interruption to Website Operations**: Adobe Launch operates without requiring access to the backend or interfering with server-side processes. Changes made through Launch are isolated to the front-end and can be easily reverted if needed.

- **Targeted, Conditional Fixes**: You can apply changes to specific sections of your site, user groups, or regions, ensuring that only the affected audience sees the modification.

- **Testing and Debugging Made Easy**: The ability to test and debug rules in real-time ensures that the changes you implement are correct and have the desired effect before going live.

Conclusion:

Adobe Launch provides a powerful, flexible, and immediate solution to resolving website issues without the need for a full development cycle. By using Launch, teams can remain agile, quickly respond to live site problems, and ensure a seamless experience for users. This ability to push urgent fixes or modifications makes Adobe Launch a must-have tool for any organization looking to minimize downtime and maintain high website performance.

Take Action Now

If you're currently facing website issues that require immediate attention, explore how you can leverage **Adobe Launch** to implement fixes **today**, and free yourself from the constraints of traditional development and build cycles.

Give a thumps up if you like this idea.

@igupta@bjoern__koth@Jennifer_Dungan 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hey @Amruthesh_AG,

Yep! I've used Launch this way before.

One such example was to clear some cookies for an A/B test that wasn't designed the best... they used the A/B tool to set a cookie, then if our developers saw the cookie, they showed the alternate page...in theory, it wasn't a bad approach, but the problem was that we had to stop the test early.. which... oops.. all the users still had the cookie. So it came down to, do we do a hot fix to take out the logic for the page variations...until I suggested using Launch to nuke the cookie. We took the second approach and had a resolution within 30 mins.

But, I would like to mention @Amruthesh_AG this isn't really an "idea"... but more of a discussion..  Ideas are basically for the Adobe product team to try and push new features into the product roadmap.  If you are okay, I am going to move it to discussions.

[bjoern__koth]

Hi @Amruthesh_AG ,

I agree, you can fix a lot with Launch, but this also raise a couple of questions and complications. For example, will the original issue be fixed on the platform side and when, meaning you may have to synchronize releases to remove patches in the future. Also, this will add an additional layer of complexity in launch and bloat the code base which may make maintenance harder.

I have seen other tools like Target being ab/used in a similar way where winners of A/B tests were pushed and remained active as the standard implementation instead of making sure implement the needed changes and deactivate the test asap.

Best case scenario is always a hotfix of the system that causes the problem instead of asking you as Tag Management owner to fix other people's problems. Sometimes this is not possible and you may need to make an exception, but in general, I would try to keep your tag management system as lean as possible.

[leocwlau]

This can be used as a last resort to temporarily fixing deadly issues but should not considered as a norm or practice. The development, compliance, and security teams could be unhappy with that, as it skips the regular development cycle and change management of the website.

Moreover, I would prefer to keep tools to their original purpose, even if they can do more. Adobe Launch is a tag management tool and its purpose is to trigger tags/pixels, where the definition of tags/pixels is getting blurred now, as some features enablement are also considered as tags now, such as adding a social feed into the web page. That is already on the edge of what I think a tag management solution should do.

[Amruthesh_AG]

@leocwlau @bjoern__koth  @Jennifer_Dungan
Thanks for your suggestions

Yes you guys are right, its just a hot-fix and temporary solution its not recommended for every release.

What I am following like Once issue is fixed I am creating ticket in JIRA to take care of this fix from AEM development on next release. then I am removing this fix from Adobe launch.

[bjoern__koth]

As long as you are keeping track of it and make sure to remove your patches as soon as they are fixed, I guess it is up to you and your colleagues and stakeholders to decide whether to use this type of patch.

As the others have pointed out, it is surely not ideal but as a last resort this may be applicable. This just shouldn't become the normal way of fixing problems on the website  

[igupta]

Hi @Amruthesh_AG ,

Thanks for the mention. As an organization for which development is heavily dependent on Vendor and more often than not, we keep coming across issues that have serious implications on user journeys, we use Adobe Launch as you described above as hotfix solution. For us, raising a ticket to vendor and getting it resolved from them does take much longer time, not to mention the cost. So even though I totally agree with @bjoern__koth @leocwlau & @Jennifer_Dungan here on the additional layer of complexity, as well as addition of extra code, this does provide some flexibility when the solution needs to be deployed quickly. Only issue I see is, when my dev team deploys a hotfix through Launch, there almost every time is flicker which is bound to happen as Adobe Launch can only manipulate the elements once they become available on page which sometimes makes them visible to users before modification.