Adobe Launch for DAM

[Berus]

Hello! 

How to add Adobe Launch script for DAM?

Example, 

Adobe Launch script: "//assets.adobedtm.com/launch-ABC123.min.js"

AEM DAM path: https://www.test.com/content/dam/report.pdf 

The Adobe Launch script can be added on HTML pages easily using the basepage template, but the DAM does not have any template, how to add scripts to the DAM? Is there any service available in OSGi or can anything be custom developed? 

Thanks

[Harwinder-singh]

@Berus The Adobe launch script is loaded during a page load.

The DAM asset/asset-URL is something that you will most likely add to some AEM page.

Once that is done, you can track any event happening on this asset link (link click, download, hover etc) using Launch script.

In that sense, you don't need to have this additionally tracked with any other script.

If there is a specific / unique use-case/problem statement that you are trying to solve, please share and we can try to help.

[Berus]

@Harwinder-singh The use case is to add Adobe Analytics for PDFs only, PDFs only live in a couple of folders in the DAM. This way the additional parameters in the URL (UTMs, Gclids etc) can be captured in Adobe Analytics as an eVar. 

In my use case, PDFs will not be used on AEM pages, it will be a direct link from many campaigns, ex: https://www.test.com/content/dam/report.pdf 

So, how can I add Adobe Launch script to the DAM which will load Adobe Analytics? The DAM does not have any HTML, so I cannot embed the launch script. 

[Harwinder-singh]

@Berus Understood !

A very similar use case has been discussed in this post - https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-questions/tracking-direct-downloads...

Hope this helps.

[Berus]

Thanks @Harwinder-singh that post isn't helpful for my use case. 

If I can ingest a script for certain folders in the DAM, like /content/dam/some/folder/pdfs.* to load Adobe Launch/Adobe Analytics scripts, that would be great, I need the '_satellite' variable available on the DAM to send data to Adobe Analytics. I'd like to explore if this can be done directly from AEM using the OOTB feature or custom development or via dispatcher/CDN. 

[aanchal-sikka]

@Berus 

Please refer to Part-3 on https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-learn/assets/advanced/asset-insights-l.... 

I hope that helps !

[Berus]

@aanchal-sikka That isn't helpful, for my use case, there is no page. It is a direct link to PDF asset in the DAM. 

[Jörg_Hoh]

Do you want to track the download of the PDF itself?

* In this case you can augment the link which points to the PDF.

* But of course that does not work if the enduser downloads the PDF without using this link, but during an non-augmented link (or if the PDF is attached to a email).

Can you elaborate on the case a bit more?

[Berus]

@Jörg_Hoh I do not want to track the download of a PDF - although, it's nice to have.

Here's my use case, 

1. Capture the UTM or Query String parameters in Adobe Analytics for PDFs that live in the DAM.
   1. Users can come from various channels/sources and land on a PDF, for example, https://www.test.com/content/dam/report.pdf?utm_source=abc&utm_medium=xyz&utm_campaign=123&utm_conte... 
   2. I want to pass these parameters to Adobe Analytics in an eVar. 

The challenge is I am unable to add Adobe Launch > Adobe Analytics script on the PDF assets in the DAM, so the typical implementation of adding a script to the head doesn't work. 

@himanshu commented that Adobe Analytics is limited to only web pages. 

[Jörg_Hoh]

Hi,

When you look at this request:

https://www.test.com/page.html?utm_source=abc&utm_medium=xzy&utm_campaign=123&utm_content=something

what does your browser do? It will send this request to the backed and retrieve the HTML markup for page.html; it will download all referenced files, including images, CSS and Javascript. Then some javascript (downloaded by the browser, because it is referenced in that page) will start inspecting the parameters in the page URL, detect those utm* parameters and send them to Adobe Analytics.

Compare it to URL you provided:

https://www.test.com/content/dam/report.pdf?utm_source=abc&utm_medium=xyz&utm_campaign=123&utm_conte...

what does your browser do? It sends that request to the CDN/dispatcher and starts downloading  a PDF file. Then it opens that file in a PDF viewer (could be the embedded one in the browser). There is no Javascript execution, as there is no Javascript linked in that PDF, which inspects the request parameters (a PDF does not know about request parameters).

I am not aware of a way to track the download of arbitrary files, unless you augment the download links (which of course limits the possibilities you have). The only exception is when you start to do logfile analysis again, but that can always be skewed by intermediate caches (for example CDN, reverse proxies etc, browser caches).

[EstebanBustamante]

@Berus Did you find the suggestions from users helpful? Please let us know if more information is required. Otherwise, please mark the answer as correct for posterity. If you have found out solution yourself, please share it with the community

[Berus]

@EstebanBustamante The suggestions work for assets that live on a page, which is different from my use case. I am still looking for a solution. 

[himanshu · Accepted solution]

Based on some of the comments i believe what you want is to track PDF views and interactions. As you have already learned, adobe analytics (or any other analytics tool) only work on channels (Web Pages/Mobile Apps etc.) where you can embed Tag Management script. (Adobe Tags or other TMS you use).

The only OOTB offering i can think of is the PDF viewer core component. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/experience-manager-core-components/using/wcm-components/p...

What it requires is that you don't expose the PDF URLs but a page URL which hosts (embeds) the PDF. this way you can do much more than just page views tracking. (what page people scrolled to, what did they search within the PDF etc.)

If PDF viewer is not an option, there is a complex customization you'll have to do which would be too much to describe here as it has dependencies, assumptions, limitations which can't be clarified without a discovery engagement.

As i always say, if you can describe your 'functional' use-case requirements , you'll get much better 'technical' solutions.

HTH.

[Berus]

Oh well, I didn't know Analytics tools are limited to just web pages. Thanks for the info! I'll build a custom solution.