#1 Introduction to On-Device Decisioning Introduction
Welcome to the On-device Decisioning Alpha program for Adobe Target's Web SDK. What problem are we trying to solve with On-device Decisioning? Well currently, Adobe Target's Web SDK requires a server call to retrieve an experience to deliver to end-users. While a server call can guarantee that the experience being shown to a user is the most relevant at that given time, it can have adverse impacts to performance. Performance is key when rendering experiences to your end-users since it can impact user experience, conversions, revenue, and retention.
Now, our alpha version of the Web SDK can cache your AB and XT campaigns on-device, perform in-memory decisioning, and return experiences to your users at zero-latency. It also offers the flexibility for you to choose to deliver the most relevant and up-to-date experience from your experimentation and ML-driven personalization campaigns. In other words, when performance is important to you, you can choose to utilize cached decisioning. But when the most relevant and up-to-date experience is needed, a server call can be made.
Familiarize yourself with the Web SDK Alpha
We introduced the new On-Device Decisioning functionality to the 2nd major version of At.js. Most of the functionality is the same, but we did introduce a few new things:
A new field called decisioningMethod which can be set as on-device, hybrid, or server-side.
| "server-side" | All decisioning is performed on the Adobe Target Edge servers, like it was before on-device decisioning. |
| "on-device" | All decisioning is performed on-device which is helpful for latency-sensitive situations, but may result in incomplete results in cases where all resulting activities could not be executed on-device. The mboxes which contain incomplete results will be noted in the response. |
| "hybrid" | Decisioning will first be attempted on-device, but any case where one or more of the resulting activities could not be fully executed on-device will result in the decisioning will be performed remotely, adding additional latency. |
We will focus on "on-device" for this homework assignment.
- A new function called getAttributes, but more on this at a later time.
Getting started
It's easy to get started with the alpha version of at.js. Simply download the alpha build of at.js and include it in the head of the html document where you want to use it. If you already have a project that uses at.js, you can replace the at.js file with the alpha version after downloading it.
Download at.js with On-Device Decisioning (right click and "Save as...")
After downloading at.js, you will need to set a few properties on the targetGlobalSettings object. Normally these values are set for you if you download at.js from the Setup->Implementation area of the Target Admin. But during the alpha, you will need to manually set the clientCode and imsOrgId. You can find these values in the Setup->Implementation area of the Target Admin. Just click the "Edit settings" button and a modal will display these values for you to copy and paste.
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.targetGlobalSettings = {
clientCode: "yourClientCodeHere",
imsOrgId: "imsOrgId@AdobeOrg"
};
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="at.js"></script>
</head>
On-Device Decisioning Method
Starting with the alpha release, at.js can be configured to run in on-device decisioning mode. In this mode, at.js loads a rules definition file on startup and uses it to determine the outcomes for subsequent getOffers calls instead of making repeated requests to the delivery API each time. This can greatly improve performance if you are concerned about network latency and would like to limit the number of requests made to target edge servers.
By default, at.js is configured to always make a request to the target delivery API for each getOffers call. But you can configure it to use on-device decisioning mode instead using the decisioningMethod setting. Specify the decisioningMethod in targetGlobalSettings.
window.targetGlobalSettings = {
clientCode: "yourClientCodeHere",
imsOrgId: "imsOrgId@AdobeOrg",
decisioningMethod: "on-device"
};Once configured in this way, your app can make standard at.js method calls and get offers that are determined locally.
Additional Configuration Options
The only configuration option required to use local decisioning is decisioningMethod. But you can specify other options that influence local decisioning in targetGlobalSettings.
Name Type Required Default Description
| decisioningMethod | String | No | remote | Decisioning Method (on-device, server-side or hybrid) |
| pollingInterval | Number | No | 5000 | Polling interval for the local decisioning artifact (in ms) |
| artifactLocation | String | No | None | A fully qualified url to a target decisioning JSON artifact. Overrides internally determined location. |
| artifactPayload | Object | No | None | A target decisioning JSON artifact. If specified, it is used instead of requesting one from a URL |
Limitations
Not all target activities can be decided locally.
Audience Rules
Some activities are not supported due to audience rules. Below is a list of audience rules with an indication if they are supported by on-device decisioning or will require a request to target edge servers to fulfill:
| Audience Rule | On-Device Decisioning Method | Server-Side Decisioning Method |
| Geo | Not Supported | Supported |
| Network | Not Supported | Supported |
| Mobile | Not Supported | Supported |
| Custom | Supported | Supported |
| Operating System | Supported | Supported |
| Site Pages | Supported | Supported |
| Browser | Supported | Supported |
| Visitor Profile | Not Supported | Supported |
| Traffic Sources | Not Supported | Supported |
| Time Frame | Supported | Supported |
Go for a spin and try out a sample
We provided a sample for you to try out to help you warm up to this new functionality. Going through this will definitely help you get up to speed. The samples are located in this repository - https://github.com/jasonwaters/target-atjs-samples
Less Talking, More Action!
On-device decisioning works by defining your Target activities as a file of which will be downloaded and cached on browsers of your users. Our Web SDK knows how to interpret the file and make decisions locally on your users' browsers.
- Download the the alpha build of at.js and configure the targetGlobalSettings object with your clientCode, imsOrgId, and decisioningMethod as on-device.
- Deploy the alpha build of at.js to a development or staging environment for testing purposes.
- Go to the Target UI for your organization, and create and activate a form-based composer or VEC AB activity that uses audience rules that is supported by on-device decisioning. TIP: You must create a new activity after deploying the alpha build of at.js so that the file can be generated. Also, after creating and activating the new activity, it may take up to 5 minutes or more for the file that contains the activity to be generated and propagated to the Akamai edges. This is because we have a cron job set to monitor any new activities for on-device decisioning every 5 minutes.
- Wait for about 5-10 minutes and browse to your webpage that you have the alpha build of at.js deployed. Make sure that the activity is executed correctly.
- Try launching more than one on-device decisioning form-based composer or VEC AB activities!
Gitbook Documentation (WIP)
https://adobe-target.gitbook.io/docs/sdk-reference-guides/web-sdk
