Good/Best way to create (basic) offer environments for production

[#1]

The following references to pages refer to file interaction-v6.1-en.pdf of https://docs.campaign.adobe.com/doc/AC6.1/en/PDF/AC61-doc-pdf-en.zip.

On page 115 in section “Creating a test environment” there is the following warning:

“Only use this environment creation method for test environments. In all other cases, use the target mapping wizard. For more on this, refer to Creating an offer environment [page 19].”

But: for the test environment I have a rather clear description that works (what is the problem to use it for production?) while with the description on page 19-21 (section “Creating an offer environment”) I have problems:

- I am testing in a test Adobe Campaign instance where offer environments for Visitor and Recipient already exist. When I follow the example on page 19-21 to create a new Visitor environment, I get no error but I also do not find a new visitor instance; though in page 20 I read: “3 Adobe Campaign creates two environments (Design and Live)”. I only see in Administration > Configuration > Data schemas, that some new Data schemas have been created, if I used a new extension namespace (Tracking and Delivery logs for Visitors, and in addition Reactions for Recipients)

- In pages 19-21 I find no way to select where in the explorer tree to add a new offer environment. But there surely should be a way to do this (e.g. to create more than 1 offer environment for visitors).

So, confronted with these issues: what is a good way to create an offer environment for production?

Michael

[#2]

Hi Michael,

I'm not sure I understand your requirements. The "Creating a test environment" section is for sandbox mode (i.e not to deploy anything), while the method described in "Creating an offer environment" via the target mapping is the correct way of setting a real environment and will automatically associate the offer environment to the selected target and it will add the correct schemas and entries to the explorer (one entry under "Offers - design" and one entry under "Offers - live".

If Visitor and Recipient environment already exist, it is normal if you cannot have 2 environments for the same. So if you want to test the environment creation, you may want to use another dimension than visitors or recipients.

Hope this helps,

Florent

[#3]

Hi Florent

You wrote: “So if you want to test the environment creation, you may want to use another dimension than visitors or recipients.” I tried out all alternatives in Administration > Campaign/Delivery management > Delivery mappings. In most alternatives, there were error messages (mostly of the kind “Schema … not found …”). No error message was, in addition to “Visitors” and  “Recipients”, only for “WebEvent-Recipient”. And though no error was shown for “WebEvent-Recipient”, I could find no additional offer environments in the Explorer. In my sandbox the old offer environments are below a folder “Explorer-root > company-name > Offer Management”; there no additional offer environment had been added and I can not find it anywhere else in the Explorer.

You also wrote: “it is normal if you cannot have 2 environments for the same”, but for me it is not that simple:

On page 103 of interaction-v6.1-en.pdf (or in https://docs.campaign.adobe.com/doc/AC6.1/en/ITA_Unitary_interactions_Anonymous_interactions.html) I find: “If you want to filter several types of visitors, for instance in the case of anonymous offers presented for one or more brands, you need to create an environment for each brand, and a Visitors type folder for each environment.”

The concrete example is “brand”, which I can not easily use in the sandbox. But it also says “for instance … brands”, so there should be also other examples beside them. So what would be an other example for “Several types of visitors” for a production (not test) case (and how do I realize it)?

(I tried out a duplicate of mapVisitor, I did it connected with the visitor schema and an extension of the visitor schema, and could not create a new offer environment in the way explained in “Creating an offer environment” of https://docs.campaign.adobe.com/doc/AC6.1/en/ITA_Managing_environments_Live-Design_environments.html)