Do recommendation catalog items have to hit an mbox before showing?

[brentonc]

I've spent way too much time trying to setup recommendations using Adobe Target. Here is what I've done and the issues I'm facing.

Successfully:

1. Uploaded a data feed to populate ~4k products into the catalog (Status shows I'm good to go)

2. Setup a recommendation activity. Using VEC it shows great, using a 3x1 design, and a custom criteria.

3. Custom criteria is using "Current Item" and static filter like thumbnail is present

4. I set an entity.id and category.id on all pages

Issues:

1. I'm not getting anything to display when I visit one of the pages

2. Target mbox shows the entity.id and category.id are populated

One main question I have is do entities have to be seen by a visitor and sent fired in the Adobe Target mbox before it qualifies to be used in a recommendation? Or can the catalog suffice?

When I debug the recommendation I see the data source is mbox and based on 14 days but seems stupid that I can't recommend items if they are in the catalog.

Can't I just do this: If user is on page = x, show recommendations (articles) with author = y and it returns catalog items that have an author = y regardless of if that entity was hit in an mobx?

[surebee]

Hi brentonc70819569​,

Thank you for writing in!

Per our discussion in the Client Care ticket for this issue, the reason you are not seeing recommendations is because the entity.id value being passed in the mbox call is incorrect (it does not match the entity.id of the article in the catalog). You should be able to recommend items from the catalog, as long as you are passing the correct entity.id.

Also, the criteria that you are using on the activity is using "current item" which uses entity.id as a key for recommendations and then uses the inclusion rules that were set up (such as same category etc). So, if the correct entity.id is passed, you should be able to see the recommendations.

[brentonc]

I think I understand but one question unanswered is the following...

If the following are correct entities should display in a recommendation?

1. entity.id is being pass in the mbox and is the same entity.id found in the catalog

2. Criteria is using "Current item" as the recommendation key

3. Inclusion rules are verified to match 200+ entities

Or even if the above are true do the entities matching the inclusion rules still have to have had an entity.id view (passed) in an mbox for the algorithms to display them as recommendations?

Seems when I use the debugger it show shows the mbox being a data source with a date range like below:

"datasource" : "mbox",

"dayCount" : 14,