Ecommerce Tracking

Alternatively, talk to the people over in Analytics and ask that the way we communicate products be made less cryptic!

Wha?!?!? ...and lose your s.product scouting badge?!?! bahahahaha!

So does this idea not what you guys are looking for? Am I the only one who has an e-commerce site and not see the pain of building the product string -_-

Oh - much pain, my friend.  The format of the products string is an absolute nightmare.

Worst case, they could make it possible to set the value in the action configuration and then we could do the heavy lifting from a data element definition.   A "format product string" action would be better, but making that general purpose and configurable might pose a challenge.

Ultimately, this is a request for the Analytics team since they own their extension.  But we have taken the liberty of creating a ticket for them and assigning it to a human =)

Can you also recommend to them to get rid of / deprecate s.products?  It's so....old, and not good anymore.  It's sad to see Adobe Analytics advancing in so many ways, but still stuck on this old stuff.  Have a new variable that is an array of objects.  Heck, that thing can still populate the products variable for all I care, but make it easier to set values.  They tease us with mention of the "productList" variable in AppMeasurement, but it doesn't do anything.

I'm getting pretty close to making this a reality as a Launch Extension.   I still have a few loose ends to wrap up, but I'm pleased enough to give you a sneak peak.  Right now I'm in the Launch Integration Environment but would like to know if any of you would be interested in participating in a beta phase.

My design criteria have been:

1) Allow any combination of core product string settings, custom events, and merch evars.

2) Allow the product string set variables action to work seamlessly with the AA extension's clear/set/send actions.

3) Automatically manage s.events based on the value of s.products

4) Allow the Set Product String action to be called multiple times in the same rule (product string augmentation)

5) Provide an option to automatically update s.linkTrackVars and s.limnkTrackEvents based on product string composition

6) Provide a Launch action to surgically clear specific s.products settings (remove a merch eVar or event)

7) Provide a way to build complex product strings that have traditional and non-traditional products (i.e. tracking products, promotions, payment types, and shipping groups on an e-commerce purchase event).

Here is an example result from the configuration above:

Adam,

You can definitely suggest that idea on the Adobe Analytics community. As for updating the Analytics extension, Ben has logged the feature request. We'll be sure to update you on any progress made. In the meantime, there is at least one extension that helps with setting the s.products variable in the extension catalog and it sounds like others are building additional third-party extensions.

Thanks,

Jantzen

Did you ever finish this off and get it added to the Extension Catalog?

You may want to take a look at the Adobe Analytics Product String extension.  I agree there should be a better way to set this in the Set Analytics Variables action, but the AGS team has provided an alternative method with their extension, and stewarts16448458​'s extension above looks spectacular as well.