The browser-side container is a “box” containing all your partner solutions’ tags. Thus, tags that were formerly placed in your site’s source code are now all concentrated and managed in the same place – the container – for more effective control and faster deployment.

Note: in order to satisfy operational and organisational requirements or solve performance issues, you may have to use multiple containers for your site.

Hosting types

We offer two ways for your container's hosting:

• Via our CDN (Content Delivery Network): provides you a total autonomous deployment. Our CDN is having a 99.9% of SLA

• Via your site’s web servers, managed by your IT department or outside technical provider. With this hosting option, you can choose a synchronization method (automatic or manual) for transmitting the modifications made for your site in the Commanders Act interface. In all cases : for a new workspace, you will be must to configure the connector on the platform. Use the menu Administration => Connector Credentials to add a new connector

FTP connector configuration

Simply fill in all fields of the form: Name: Give an explicit name to your connector Containers: Select any client-side containers you want to associate with the connector Protocol: Select the type of File Transfer Protocol you need. We recommend to using SFTP, for security reasons Host: Enter the main domain or IP address of your FTP repository Port: Enter your standard port ID (SFTP is 22, FTP is 21, FTPS is 21...) Path: Enter the path of your repository. Should end with a "/" (see below example) User: Login to access of your FTP Password/Key: if there's a password or a key associated to your FTP, enter this information here

CDN connector configuration

It's almost identical to the FTP connector, there is only 2 more steps: Select a CDN vendor (EdgeCast or Akamai) Setup the "Purge" part (use the Account ID, Token and Purge URL provided by your CDN vendor)

URL connector configuration

Just give an explicit name, enter the correct URL and select any client-side container(s) you want to associate with the connector

Amazon S3 connector configuration

It's almost identical to the FTP connector. However, it requires a bucket as the host:

Google Cloud Storage connector configuration

fill in all fields of the form: Name: Give an explicit name to your connector Bucket: Enter the main domain or IP address of your FTP repository Path: Enter the path of your repository. Should end with a "/" (see below example) Project ID: Enter the id of the project in Google Cloud Storage. Can be found in Google Cloud JSON Key file Private key ID: Enter your private RSA Key Id for Google Cloud Services. Can be found in Google Cloud JSON Key file Private key: Enter the password associated to your Private Key ID. Still can be found in Google Cloud JSON Key file Google Account Email: Enter the client Google Cloud Services email used for authentication. You can find it in Google Cloud JSON Key file Client Id: Enter the client Google Cloud Services Id. Still can be found in Google Cloud JSON Key file Client X509 Cert URL: Enter the client custom X509 URL for Google Cloud Services. Can be found in Google Cloud JSON Key file

//example for the private key:

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxp
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy0
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzA
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa=
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----

Bing Ads connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Bing:

Facebook Ads connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Facebook:

Criteo connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Criteo:

Google Ads connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Google Ads:

Snapchat connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Snapchat:

Adobe Analytics connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Adobe: For more information, please refer to the dedicated page

Equativ connector configuration

Simply follow the step by step guide provided by Equativ:

Test & Debug

Once your connector configuration is done, you can click on the Test button to check that it's working properly. If it is correct, then you will see the following message:

For more information about the generation step, please refer to the Generation Page of the section Tags

A container can be deployed at the “DEPLOY” step:

Before deploying a container version, you can:

• Display all the modifications made to your container since its last deployment (technical logs) (1) in the “MODIFICATIONS SINCE LAST DEPLOYMENT” section

• View the history of generated versions in the “DEPLOY BY VERSION” section.

For each version generated, you will find his version number, creation date, status (“deployed” when it is the version currently deployed and/or “live” when it is the version currently called for the site) , the name of the person who generated the version, a comment, and the container’s size. You will also be able to load your selected container version directly from the interface or via a permanent link:

Additional information:

The “Weight Detail” section shows the container’s size (in GZIP format), its change in size since the last deployment as well as the percentage of space occupied by each of the following container elements:

• Core: The weight of the content necessary to execute the container

• Tags: Tags’ weight

• Events: Events’ weight

• Rules: Rules’ weight

• Privacy: Privacy module’s weight (if activated)

• Internal variables: Internal variables’ weight

• Deduplication channel: Deduplication channel’s weight (if activated)

Deploying a new container version or rolling back a container is done in two steps:

• Choose the version to deploy.

Note: to roll back the container, just select a previous container version.

• Choose the deployment method.

Note: the deployment method depends on your container’s hosting and synchronization, which are defined at the project’s start with your personal consultant.

Once the version and deployment method are selected, a window summarizing the deployment will appear. Click “Deploy” to validate:

Additional information

Depending on the hosting and synchronization methods defined at the project’s start and configured in the interface, different deployment options are available in the drop-down menu under “Choose the deployment method”:

A tag is a piece of code executed on your site that allows information regarding the site or its visitors to be sent to a digital marketing solution.

Example: Digital analytics tags collect information on site page views, visitors, and conversions in order to propose analysis of your site’s performance. Retargeting tags collect information on products viewed or added to the cart by visitors in order to retarget them to other sites via banners that highlight the products they browsed.

Additional information

Here is an example of a tag (basic 'custom event' Commanders Act OneTag):

From the select step

The first step of the deployment process “SELECT” displays the tags present in your container and allows you to add new ones.

The main area of the “SELECT” interface displays all the tags already present in your container. Each block represents one tag: You can edit or delete your tag by clicking on the respective icons in the block.

You can search for a previously added tag by solution name using the “All vendors” filter in the drop-down menu or by searching for the tag name via the search box:

Click the blue “ADD TAG(S)” button to add a new tag to your tag list:

The Commanders Act tag library window will appear displaying the pre-configured tags in the interface. The tag library is composed of the following elements:

“Search a tag“: Search box for finding a tag in the library by its name

“All vendors“: Filter for finding tags by solution name

Search by letter: Tags in the library are sorted in alphabetical order (by tag name)

Tag library: All the tags in the library (click the tag(s) you want to add to your container)

“Add tag(s)“: Click this button to add the selected tag(s) to the container

To add one or more tags to your container, check the desired tags and click the green “ADD TAG(S)” button. Your new tags will appear in the list of tags present in the container.

From the edit step

Go to the “EDITION” section. Follow the same steps then from the "SELECT" page

The blue ADD TAGS buttons will open the Commanders Act tag library.

A web container is the browser-side component of Commanders Act Enterprise Tag Management system. It is composed of a set of browser-side tags, rules, triggers and enriched web data layer. It is represented by a container javascript file that is put on each pages of your website. For information about how users setup and maintain containers, see the dedicated Web container guide.

Connect serverside destinations to a web container

Sending data from your web container to serverside destinations offers a lot of advantages (web performance, security, data accuracy/quality, etc.)

To start sending data, there is only one easy step to follow : adding the Commanders Act One Tag.

The last tag that you will ever setup.

The One Tag allows you to send all your events to the Commanders Act platform in a normalized way, and once and for all, to benefit from all the serverside advantages that offer the platform.

Recommandations for setup

In order to take advantage of all the benefits offered by a Web container, it is essential to implement a datalayer on every page of your website.

Moreover, the implementation of events on your site will allow you to obtain a more powerful and better quality tracking

Extensions

It is possible to extend Commanders Act TMS with additional modules:

The “TEST” step seeks to prevent problems in production by testing the version of a container and diagnosing its compatibility and reliability.

At first, it will block deployment of the faulty container, but you can ignore some of the errors found, such as those resulting from incompatible JavaScript elements with old versions of browsers (IE8 for example).

A total of 8 browsers/OS are tested:

• The latest version of Edge

• The latest version of Chrome

• The latest version of Firefox

• The latest version of Opera

• The latest version of Safari (for the Mac OS)

• The latest version of Safari (for tablets)

• The latest version of Android (for tablets)

Tests are performed on five levels:

• Container: The container’s code (the JavaScript file) is tested globally

• Data layer: The data layer (internal and external variables, etc.) is tested in isolation

• Custom JS blocks: The static and dynamic JavaScript files are tested in isolation

• Tags: All tags are tested, and errors are displayed by tag

• Events: All events are tested, and errors are displayed by event

If no errors are detected, your version is “DEPLOYABLE”:

If an error is detected in your container, it will be indicated by a red “X” under the browser returning the error and on the line of the element the error was found in (Data layer, Custom JS blocks, Tags, Events); it will also appear on the Container line .

In this case, your container version is “NOT DEPLOYABLE” until you correct or ignore the error.

We recommend that you correct the errors detected in the Data layer, Custom JS Blocks, Tags, and Event before correcting the Container errors since the latter will most often disappear after the other four levels are corrected.

To display and correct errors, click on a red “X”.

A window will appear displaying the test error details. Below is an example of a possible tag error:

Error message details returned by the tested browser

Tag name and line number where the error is found. Clicking the button redirects you to the “Edit” step where you can correct your tag’s code directly.

Note: Do not hesitate to contact your personal consultant or the Commanders Act support team (support@commandersact.com) if you need help correcting an error.

Finally, the “TEST” step allows you to consult the error history for the different container versions generated. This history is displayed at the bottom of the “Test” page, where you can click the red “X“s again to display the error details:

Summary of rules for tags and events

You can use the “Summary” interface to assign previously created rules directly to the new tags you want to add to the container:

By default, a newly added tag is called on the container loaded trigger, on all pages, with no constraints.

You can use this interface to add perimeters and constraints alerady created to tags or events added afterwards or modify them from the “Summary” interface:

• To add a perimeter to a tag, you must check the box where the tag line and the perimeter column intersect. You can also delete a tag’s perimeter(s) by checking the green “All pages” column. The tag will now activate on all pages.

• To add a constraint to a tag, click edit button (pencil icon) close to the triggers and use the existing constraints list to select those you wish to add to your tag.

Additional information:

You can add multiple triggers, perimeters and constraints to the same tag:

• The “OR” logic operates when multiple triggers are added to a tag. For example, if you check the “Container loaded” and “add to cart button” triggers, your tag will activate in one case OR the other, i.e. on the container loaded and at the click on the button.

• The “OR” logic operates when multiple perimeters are added to a tag. For example, if you check the “homepage” and “account creation page” perimeters, your tag will activate in one case OR the other, i.e. for the homepage and the account creation page.

• The “AND” logic operates when multiple constraints are added to a tag. For example, if you check the “logged user” and “mobile exclusion” constraints, your tag will activate only if the two conditions are met, i.e. only for logged users AND everything except a mobile device.

• The “AND” logic operates when a trigger, a perimeter and a constraint are added to the same tag. For example, if you check the “container loaded” trigger, the “homepage” perimeter and the “logged user” constraint, your tag will activate only if the three rules are valid, i.e. only at the container loaded AND on the homepage AND logged visitors.

Adding rules

You can add 3 types of rules: constraint, perimeters and triggers.

• Perimeters are the page types you want to activate your tags for (example: the homepage, “my account” page, product page, etc.).

• Constraints are rules based on criteria other than the page type (example: rules based on visitor status, the type of browser or device, etc.).

• Triggers are rules allowing to execute tags on different conditions: container loaded, DOM Ready, clicks, form submissions, scroll and custom events.

To create a new trigger, click “Trigger” > “ADD TRIGGER”:

To create a new perimeter, click “Perimeters” > “ADD PERIMETER”:

To create a new constraint, click “Constraints”> “ADD TAG CONSTRAINT”:

By clicking “Add trigger” a rule creation interface will appear. This interface allows you to create a trigger of your choice: container loaded, DOM ready, click, form submission, scroll and custom.

By clicking “Add perimeter” or “Add tag constraint“, a rule creation interface will appear. This interface can be seen as a “tool box” that allows you to create rules based on various elements: cookies, data layer variables, URLs, etc.

The “tools” available to you can be selected at the top of the rules creation interface, and various options allow you to create the most appropriate rule for your tag. For each new rule created, make sure to complete the “Name” field (rule name), check the boxes of the tags to which the rule applies and configure the rule.

Note: The perimeter and constraint creation interfaces offer the same options, but in the constraint creation interface you need to link the constraint to a specific trigger:

Modifying a rule

To modify a rule, click the “edit” icon (pencil icon).

Note: you can modify the rule’s name and value. However, you must create a new rule if you wish to change its type: if you want to replace the “If Variable Equals” rule with “If Variable Is not Equal”.

Deleting a rule

To delete a rule, click the “trash” icon (garbage bin icon):

Note: your rule will be saved in the trash, where you can recover or permanently delete it at any time:

Once a tag is added, you can configure it in the “EDIT” step.

A list of your tags is displayed in the left menu of the “EDIT” interface. Tags that need to be configured or validated have a warning (/!\) sign before their name.

Note: You can find a tag on the list by using the search box :

For each tag selected, a configuration window will appear in the center of the interface containing the following elements:

Expiration: An expiration date can be applied to the tag

Tag variable(s): Tag variables that need data layer data or static information linked to them

Tag code: The selected tag’s code

Use Tag Cleaner: JavaScript correction tool and preview button to see the tag’s code once its variables have been mapped with variables from the datalayer

Previous version(s): The tag’s version history;

“delete” and “save” buttons

Rules: Shortcut to the tag’s rules configuration

Expiration date

Setting expiration on a tag

You can apply a custom expiration date to each tag. Check the box to activate this function and then select a date on the calendar or type it in the blank field.

When you activate the expiration function, it automatically deactivates the tag into the container on the expiration date selected.

This function is useful if you have added a tag for a specific campaign and you want it to be deactivated once it ends, so that your container is not needlessly overloaded with tags.

Mapping tags' variables

Important reminder: You must create a link between the information requested by the different tags in the container and the data available in the data layer. Adding data layer variables to tag variables is called “mapping“.

The tag variables to map are called “dynamic variables“, and they are designated in the following manner: #variable#.

They appear in the tag’s code, in blue boldface, as well as above the tag’s code .

You must map these dynamic variables with the data layer variables available in the drop down menus (example: user email, user ID) or a static value (example: method) :

Additional information

If the tag’s code does not meet your needs, you can customize it directly in the “JAVASCRIPT CODE” section as well as the “NOSCRIPT CODE” section for browsers without JavaScript activated (this function will only work if you call the NOSCRIPT version of the container in your site’s source code):

You can modify your tag directly by transforming the dynamic variables within the code into data of your choice.

Example:

If you wish to hard code the USER ID, just replace #user_id# with the value of the ID:

You can also customize your tag’s code by changing the static elements into dynamic variables.

Example:

If you want to make all the values to be collected in a tag dynamically, simply leave them in between hashtags signs. Then save the tag after making this change and you will be able to map your variable with your data layer data:

Note: you can modify your tag anytime you want. However, please pay attention to its JavaScript structure: Dynamic elements must be placed between the ## and followed or preceded by a “+” if they are joined with static elements. The colored syntax in the tag code allows you to verify that there are no errors:

Configuring custom tags

A “Free input (custom)” tag can be used to add a tag to your container even if it is not listed in the tag library.

To configure your custom tag, just replace the default code in the “JAVASCRIPT CODE” with the code supplied by your partner solution and click “SAVE”.

In the vast majority of cases, you will see that your tag is rewritten so that its structure is compatible with that of the container and is called asynchronously. This is also done to prevent errors linked to certain JavaScript data structures such as “document.write”.

Tags are corrected by using the “Use Tag Cleaner” feature:

Uncheck the “Use Tag Cleaner” box if you do not want your tag to be rewritten.

Returning to a previous tag version

Each time a container is generated, Commanders Act saves the tags present in the container, thus allowing you to return to an old tag configuration if necessary.

You can display previous versions of a particular tag by clicking “PREVIOUS VERSION(S)”:

The “PREVIOUS VERSION(S)” window contains all the saved versions of your tag. The version displayed by default is the previous version of the tag.

Tag version: number of the last tag version saved, name of the user who generated the version, and the date and time it was generated

“Rollback“: button allowing you to return to the tag version displayed

Tag code: selected tag code (JavaScript or NoScript code depending on the option selected in (3))

Tag versions: previous versions of the tag

To return to a previous tag version, select the version you want and click “ROLLBACK“.

Applying a rule on the fly

You can add a tag activation rule directly in the “EDIT” step.

You have two options:

• You can select a previously created perimeter or constraint by clicking the drop-down menu:

• You can create a new perimeter or constraint by clicking “+”

The rule creation window will appear so that you can create your rules in the same way as in the “RULES” step.

For more information on creating rules, please refer to the Rules section.

Displaying the summary of tags and associated rules

To display a summary of all the tags present on your site along with their rules, go to the “REPORTS” tab > “Tags’ Summary“ *this page is currently accessible only from Platform v7.

You can display the code, rules and expiration date for each tag.

You can also filter the containers or tags that you want to analyze.

This report can be useful for displaying which tags are present on your site at a given time and for sharing this information with others internally. It can also help you find a tag from the list of tags present on your site.

Saving and removing a tag

Once you have finished configuring your tag, click “SAVE” to save your modifications.

You can also delete a tag you do not need any more by clicking “DELETE”.

Caution: a deleted tag cannot be recovered.

Tags' activation and execution order

To activate or deactivate tags in the “GENERATE” step, just check or uncheck each tag in the “ACTIVATION” column and generate a new container version (blue button in the upper right-hand side of the screen):

All checked tags are active and all unchecked tags are inactive. The advantage of deactivating a tag rather than permanently deleting it is that you can keep all the tag parameters (mapping, rules) and reactivate them at a later date without having to reconfigure everything.

Note: Since a deactivated tag will be visible in the interface but not in the container called for your site, your container will not become needlessly cluttered.

To modify the order in which tags are executed in a container in the “GENERATE” step, just drag and drop each tag in the “RANK” column and place them in the order in which you want them to execute on your site’s pages, and then generate a new container version (blue button in the upper-right hand side of the screen):

We recommend that you place the most important tags at the top of the container so that they have the best chance of executing if your visitors change pages quickly without waiting for them to fully load.

Setting a timeout on a tag

To improve your site’s performance, Commanders Act suggests that you deactivate a tag if it takes too long to load. You can enter a maximum duration, in milliseconds, for a tag to execute. If the tag takes longer than this time to execute, it will be deactivated.

To add a timeout to tags in the “GENERATE” step, just enter a duration in milliseconds in the “TIMEOUT MS” column and generate a new container version:

Customizing the tag library (whitelisting)

You can customize the tag library by restricting the number of tag templates available in the tag addition popin from the “Select” and “Edit” steps.

This “tags whitelist” feature is useful if you wish to limit access to the solutions in the library and only make some of them available to your staff. This aims at preventing users from placing tags you did not authorize into your containers.

The “Library management” interface is accessible to administrators and to custom users this interface was granted access to. The tags whitelist is managed from the “Admin” > “Library management” interface. This page is currently only available on platform v7.

All tags will be selected by default.

You can click the “Unselect all” option and then choose the tags you wish to make available in your library.

Select the site you wish to set up the tags white list for from the drop down menu.

You can Check/Uncheck relevant tags.

The “Select all” and “Unselect all” buttons allow you to check or uncheck many tags simultaneously.

You have the possibility to filter tags by name or alphabetical order.

Click the “SAVE” button to save your settings.

Must know:

• When a new tag is added to the tag library by Commanders Act’s staff, it is automatically unchecked if you have already created at least one tag whitelist for your site.

• You can copy a tags whitelist from one site to another from the “Administration” > “Copy management” menu.

These variables are called internal variables because they are created inside the Commanders Act web container: They are integrated directly into your site’s container, in contrast with external variables, which are added into the page’s source code by the technical staff.

Internal variables are used to collect data to enrich data through the external variables. A library of predefined internal variables is available, but you can also create your own.

Internal variables must be created in the Commanders Act interface before they can be used in containers. See the rest of the articles in the “internal variables” section to know more about the different options available to create such variables.

All internal variables created can be used:

• To be added to the solutions embedded in the container (linking internal variables and solutions is called mapping). See the “Mapping tags’ variables” article to find out how to map your internal variables in a tag.

• To create activation rules for your tags. See the “Adding Rules” article to find out how to create rules based on your internal variables.

Additional information

Internal variables are all coded in JavaScript, but you do not need any technical knowledge of JavaScript in order to use the “Predefined” variables or the “Builder” modes, since the code is generated automatically by the Commanders Act. However, you will need to know JavaScript or seek help from the Commanders Act support team in order to create your own custom internal variables.

Here are some examples of predefined internal variables:

• Internal variable for retrieving the URL of the page:
• Internal variable for retrieving the URL of the previous page/site:
• Internal variable for retrieving what comes between the first “/” and second “/” of the URL:

When to add an internal variable

There are several situations in which you may need to create an internal variable using the internal variable management interface:

• You want to retrieve elements available on your web pages, but they do not have external variables implemented by technical staff (for example: the value of a cookie, HTML tag, URL, etc.).

• You want to create a new variable based on the values of external variables already implemented by technical staff (for example: calculating the cart’s total before tax using the external variable that returns the cart’s total including tax).

• You want to create a lookup table based on an external variable (for example: when the external “country” variable is “FR”, you send an account number to your analytics tool that is different from when the variable is “IT”).

• Etc.

The link created between the internal variables and the solutions is called “mapping“. This is performed in the “EDIT” tab during the container deployment process.

Types of internal variables

There are two types of internal variables: predefined and custom.

• Predefined internal variables, have already been created and are ready to use (e.g. variables that retrieve URL fragments).

• You can also configure your own internal variables, using pre-existing variables (e.g. external variables) or retrieving elements available on your sites’ pages (e.g. cookies).

You will then be prompted to select a predefined variable universe.

The “add variable” window contains various fields:

“Predefined universe“: Selection of predefined internal variable categories

“Name“: Variable’s name

“Description“: Variable’s description

“Code“: Variable’s code

Checkbox: The selection of predefined internal variables to add to the container (it is futile to include variables you do not wish to use).

Four predefined variable universes (“Predefined universe”) are available:

• Common variables: The most used variables by both Commanders Act consultants and customers.

• Customer journey variables: Variables that exploit the visitor’s customer journey (prerequisite: the "deduplication" module must be activated).

• AT Internet plugin: Variables that exploit data collected by the AT Internet digital analytics solution (prerequisite: the AT Internet solution must be present on your site).

• Partner tags: Code snippets adapted and adaptable to partner tags to increase their potential and perform additional actions.

Add build-in internal common variable

You will find below a list of the variables available in the “Common variables” category and their description

Example:

The value of this variable (on the http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/) page will be “Commanders Act – Tag Universel – Tag Management – Commanders Act”. It takes the value of the html <title> tab.

***

Example:

The value of this variable for the “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/” page will be “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/”

***

Previously Visited URL: it stores the URL of the previous page

Example:

If the visitor arrives at the Commanders Act site via the Google search engine, the value of this variable will contain “google.fr”

***

Page URL without query string: it stores the URL of the current page without the tracking parameters (Commanders Act will remove the “?” from the URL and everything after it.

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “https://www.google.fr/webhp?tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10″, the value of this variable will be “https://www.google.fr/webhp”

***

Page query string only: it stores the the current page’s URL parameters (Commanders Act a will save everything that follows the “?” without including it).

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “https://www.google.fr/webhp?tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10″, the value of this variable will be “tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10”

***

URL parameters: it stores the current page’s array of URL parameters.

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “https://www.google.fr/webhp?tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10″, this variable will contain the value of these three parameters: “tab”, “ei” and “ved”, and their values will be accessible in the following manner: “tc_array_url_vars[‘tab’]”, “tc_array_url_vars[‘ei’]” and “tc_array_url_vars[‘ved’]”

***

Folder #1 in URL: it stores the First “folder” in the current page’s URL

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/fonctionnalites/tag-management”, the value of this variable will be “fr”.

***

Folder #2 in URL: it stores the second “folder” in the current page’s URL

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/fonctionnalites/tag-management”, the value of this page will be “fonctionnalites”

***

Folder #3 in URL: it stores Third “folder” in the current page’s URL

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/fonctionnalites/tag-management“, the value of this variable will be “tag-management”

***

Random value(integer 9 digits): it creates and stores a random number composed of 9 digits

Example:

With each pageview/loading of this variable, the variable will return a random 9-digit number; for example, “255103492”

***

URL pathname without query string /…/…/….html: it stores the current page’s URL without the parameters (including the “/”)

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “https://www.google.fr/webhp?tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10″, the value of this variable will be “/webhp”

***

Https protocol? “yes”/”no”: Sends “yes” if the page uses the “https” protocol and “no” if it does not

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “https://www.google.fr/webhp?tab=ww&ei=-ATjVPTyFaWqywOpqoHYDw&ved=0CAcQ1S4#q=inurl&start=10″, the value of this variable will be “yes”

***

Current domain name (www.domain.com): it stores the current page’s domain name

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/fonctionnalites/tag-management”, the value of this variable will be “www.tagcommander.com”

***

Main domain name without subdomains: it stores the current page’s domain name without the subdomains

Example:

If the visitor is on the page “http://www.tagcommander.com/fr/fonctionnalites/tag-management”, the value of this variable will be “tagcommander.com”

***

Unix timestamp: Current UNIX time (the number of seconds since January 1, 1970 00:00:00)

Example:

The current UNIX time when this document was written was “142166467”

***

Device: This variable provides information regarding a user’s device based on their screen resolution.

Adding built-in customer journey internal variables

You will find below a list of the variables available in the “Customer journey variables” category and their corresponding description:

Last touch name (channel): Channel of the last touchpoint saved (prerequisite: deduplication must be active on your site).

Example:

For customer journey “SEO/Google -> SEM/Bing -> Display/Criteo” the value of this variable will be “Display”.

***

Last touch name (source): Source of the last touchpoint saved (prerequisite: deduplication must be active on your site).

Example :

For customer journey “SEO/Google -> SEM/Bing -> Display/Criteo” the value of this variable will be “Criteo”.

Adding customer internal variables

You can create your own internal variable in two ways:

• Via the “Builder” tab: The “Builder” mode assists you in creating customized internal variables without any technical knowledge or expertise;

• Via the “Custom” tab: “Custom” is a completely customized mode used to write your own JavaScript code. This method requires technical knowledge and expertise (but your Commanders Act consultant or support team can create custom variables for you if necessary).

“tC.internalvars.“: The variable’s name (caution: it must not contain any accents or special characters, especially “-“).

Note: The variable’s name is always prefixed by “tC.internalvars.” in order to avoid conflict with other variables on your site. For example, to see the content of an internal variable directly on your site or use a variable on another site, do not forget to specify the full name of the variable, which includes the prefix “tC.internalvars.” along with the variable’s name.

“Builder“/”Custom“: Select “Builder” or “Custom” creation mode

Area to create the variable (see details below for the Builder and Custom modes)

“Type“: The type of variable. Please refer to the article “Managing Variable Types“.

“Description“: A description of the variable, to clarify the variable’s name (e.g. “Product IDs separated by a /” can be the description of the variable named “tC.internalvars.concatid”)

“Detailed description“: A detailed description of the variable, to further clarify its name (e.g. “ID1/ID1/ID2…” can be the description of the variable named “tC.internalvars.concatid”)

Builder mode

The “Builder” mode offers you three types of operations (1) that we describe below:

• “Join internal and/or external variable(s)”;

• “Join two-dimensional array variable(s)”;

• “Variable mapping”.

Join internal and/or external variable(s)

This operation allows you to join internal or external variables with the separator of your choice.

Example:

If you wish to join an external variable returning the order ID with another external variable returning the order amount, with everything separated by a “-“, select the “order_id” variable in the “External variables” tab to the left and then enter and add your separator in the “add separator” field in order to finish the “order_amount” variable in the “External variables” tab.

Join two-dimensional array variable(s)

This operation allows you to join the array keys of a “Two dimensional array” variable.

Example:

Your retargeting provider wants you to send all the prices of the products added to the cart separated by “|”. Begin by selecting the variable that contains the product information on the cart page (here the “user_id” variable) (1), then the “order id” variable (here the “order_confirmation_id” key) and the separator “|”. For example, the value obtained might be: “user@mail.com|123456789AB”.

Variable mapping

This operation allows you to create a lookup table for an input value (via an already existing internal or external variable) and an expected output value.

Example:

You want to send a different account ID to your Digital Analytics solution depending on the work environment (pre-prod or prod). Select your reference variable (here the external variable “env_work”), add its different input values in the “INPUT” field (e.g. “pre-prod” et “prod”) and then add the output account IDs of your analytics solution in the “OUTPUT” field. You can also add a default value if none of the values entered in the “INPUT” field have been foundj,yècr èuc.

This operation allows you to automatically send the correct account ID to your analytics solution depending on the work environment.

Full custom mode

Note: make sure that the variable’s JavaScript code always has the following syntax: tC.internalvars.nameVariable = "yourCode";

Also, make sure that nameVariable has the same name as the variable entered in the “tC.internalvars” field (see first screenshot with the variable tC.internalvars.my_custom_var):

Note: To avoid potential errors when the internal variable’s code is included, the “TEST” step of the container deployment process will test your internal variable on multiple browsers/operating systems.

Managing variable types

The variable “type” (also called “processing function“) allows you to modify the variable format on the fly when mapping your tags.

They are useful when one of your solutions requests a variable format different from the format that you return in your internal variable. For example, if your “order_discount” variable contains three decimal places, the processing functions will allow you to correct this so that your solutions receive the value with only 2 decimal places.

The most commonly used types are:

• Order amount: this allows you to modify the number format (amount) on the fly.

You can change separating commas into periods (e.g. “12,50” becomes “12.50”), choose the number of decimal places to retain (e.g. “12.50 becomes “12.5”), or convert the amount into pennies (“12.50 becomes “1250”).

• Alphanumeric & Special chars: this allows you to modify the character string format on the fly.

You can replace special characters with “_” (e.g. “the company&its values” changes to “the company_its values”) or truncate a character string (e.g. limiting the variable’s value to 10 characters)

Once you have mapped your variable, click the link symbol:

Categorizing internal variables

Since you can create a variable using other variables, it is important for you to be able to manage the order in which they are executed so as to avoid any problems.

Therefore, you must declare an internal variable A, on which an internal variable B is based, before variable B. Variable B needs variable A declared first in order to be executed without creating errors.

To categorize an internal variable you must :

• Click the edit button (pencil icon to the right in the same row where the internal variable is located) and select the type from the drop down menu as depicted below. This applies only when you add a predefined variable.
• Select the type when you add a custom variable, whether with the “Builder” or ‘Full Custom” mode. (Similar window as the one above).

Declare an internal variable in a container

You can link an internal variable to a container if you have multiple containers on your site.

By doing this action, you declare just once the internal variable code in the linked container(s).

Consequences:

• You reduce the weight of the other containers by avoiding to declare many times the code of one single internal variable.

• If you call 2 containers on the same page, you avoid to overwrite the variable value defined in the first container by the value defined in the second container (if the value can change during the page load)

Example: two containers are on the same page, one in the header and one in the body. If you link an internal variable to the header container you will reduce the code of the page as the variable won’t be declared twice, and keep the value of the variable defined in the header.

To link an internal variable to a container, select the container of your choice when you create or modify your variable in the “Declared in container” field:

To realize a bulk action on multiple variables, check the variables of your choice, then choose the container(s) in the list:

The data layer represents all your available data. It consists of information about your site (e.g. page name, product ID) and your visitors (e.g. user ID, customer status) in the form of JavaScript variables.

These variables have two uses:

– To populate the tags present in your container;

– To create activation rules for your tags.

Additional information:

The data layer can consist of two types of data:

– Data implemented by your IT department or your technical provider for all your web pages, based on the CSS, Backoffice and CRM. These data are called “external variables” and are displayed in your site’s source code as a JavaScript object containing all the variables used by your tags.

This is what the external variables look like in the source code:

– Data created in the interface by Commanders Act staff or Commanders Act users based on information available on the site’s pages (URL, cookies, HTML tags, external variables in the data layer, etc). They are called “internal variables” and are displayed in the Commanders Act web container’s code.

Adding static JavaScript code

Commanders Act allows you to include “free” JavaScript in the tag container, with no character limit, in two places named “Static JavaScript Code”.

The “Static JS codes” allow you to perform different types of actions, notably:

– Fixing data layer issues.

E.g. If your external variable “page_name” contains values with special characters, you can delete or replace them in the Static JavaScript code (e.g. change “&” into “and” as follows:

Thus, you can continue to use your external variable “page_name” in tags by removing its special characters via the Static JS code.

– Recovering data absent in the data layer from the site pages’ source code.

E.g. You can recover JQuery form fields in your Static JS block in the following manner:

The “Static JS codes” appear in two places in the left menu of the “EDIT” step interface:

– The first Static JS code is placed before the declaration of internal variables in the order that elements in your site’s container are executed.

– The second Static JS code is placed after the declaration of the internal variables (you can thus reuse previously declared internal variables in this position):

The same user interface is used for the Static JavaScript code regardless of whether it executes before or after the internal variables. Just enter the JavaScript code you desire and click “SAVE”.

Adding dynamic JavaScript files

Commanders Act allows dynamic JavaScript file(s) to be included in a tag container, in two places named “Dynamic JavaScript File(s)“.

Unlike “Static JavaScript codes“, “Dynamic JavaScript Files” are JavaScript files outside Commanders Act that are downloaded and then added or updated in the container each time it is generated.

The “Dynamic JavaScript File(s)” allow you to perform different types of actions.

For example, you can use them to import a JavaScript file containing a JQuery library (if it is not already called on your site) or a JavaScript currency converter file into your container. By importing these files into Commanders Act, you can add them to your solutions or use them to create new variables (for example, you can automatically update currencies in your solutions’ tags).

“Dynamic JavaScript File(s)” appear in two places in the left menu of the “EDIT” step:

• The first Dynamic JavaScript File(s) is placed before the declaration of the internal variables, in the order that the elements of the container on your site are executed.

• The second Dynamic JavaScript File(s) is placed after the declaration of the internal variables (you can thus reuse previously declared internal variables in this position):

The same user interface is used for the Dynamic JavaScript File(s) regardless of whether they execute before or after the internal variables. Just enter the URL of your JavaScript file and click “SAVE”.

You can perform this operation again for all the JavaScript files to be included in your tag container.

Caution: adding JavaScript files to the container will increase its size and thus increase the time for the pages to load.

You can update your dynamic file manually (by clicking “Refresh”), display its contents (“View”) or delete it (“Remove”):

To delete a container, click “More”, next to the blue Edit button while on the Dashboard, in the container list section.

In the new window, you will see the containers’ list, the container you selected will be highlighted. To delete it click the red “Delete” button to the right.

A confirmation message will appear

To create/add a container, go to the “Web Containers” tab on the platform and click “ADD CONTAINER”:

A configuration window will appear with 3 main tabs:

• ““: to manage basic container options, such as naming your container

• ““: to manage container updating options

• ““: to manage advanced container options

After configuring the various container options, click “Add”

General

Simply fill the “Name“ field with Container’s wanted name

Synchronization

Mode: Synchronization modes for the container:

• FTP/CDN: This mode hosts the container on an FTP or CDN server (the server must be previously configured in Administration => Connector Credentials). By clicking this option, the “Set as deployed and send to FTP” synchronization mode will be proposed in the “DEPLOY” step.

• Amazon S3: This mode hosts the container on an FTP or CDN server (the server must be previously configured in Administration => Connector Credentials). By clicking this option, the “Set as deployed and send to AWS” synchronization mode will be proposed in the “DEPLOY” step.

• Update by batch from permanent link: this mode activates a permanent link to the last container version deployed. This mode can be useful when manually updating the container on your site or if you use a batch that regularly restores the last container version on the site. By clicking this option, the “Set as deployed and use external URL” synchronization mode will be proposed in the “DEPLOY” step.

• Custom URL: this mode calls a URL when deploying the container (the URL must be previously configured in Administration => Connector Credentials). This URL refers to a script placed on your servers (created by you) that must perform the operations necessary to launch the container. By clicking this option, the “Set as deployed and call the URL” synchronization mode will be proposed in the “DEPLOY” step.

• Manual: this mode allows you to load the container directly from the interface so that you can then deploy it manually on your site. You can check the “Add unminified version” function in order to load the container in either compressed (minified) or uncompressed (unminified) mode. By clicking this option, the “Set as deployed and get JavaScript file” synchronization mode will be proposed in the “DEPLOY” step.

• Send an email: this deployment mode complements the other 4 modes. It is used to send a notification email to specified users when a deployment is carried out.

Recurring synchronization:

Recurring synchronization is used to automatically deploy a container on a regular basis via the deployment mode desired (FTP, batch or send by email).

Two programming modes are available: Simplified mode and expert mode:

• “Simplified mode”: Simplified mode is used to program recurring synchronization by the day and hour (e.g. recurring synchronization every day at 2 p.m.).

• “Expert mode”: Expert mode is used to program recurring synchronization with more precision, by minute, hour, day, week and month (e.g. recurring synchronization every two weeks of the month on Tuesdays at 11:35 a.m.).

Advanced

NoScript support: This option is used to create a noscript version of the container that allows both the container and its tags to execute for users without JavaScript activated on their browser.

You can also define a JavaScript version and noscript version for each tag.

Verification by MD5 file: This option is linked to the “Manual” deployment mode and associates an MD5 code with a container version in either compressed (minified) or uncompressed (unminified) mode in order to verify the integrity of the container before putting it into production. It does this by comparing TagCommander’s MD5 code with the MD5 code calculated by your technical team upon receiving the container.

Include jQuery (at the test step): This option allows you to include the JavaScript jQuery library in the test step so that you won’t have any errors linked to its absence if it is indeed present on your site.

Display block for old tc_event function: This option allows to show/ hide the old TagCommander event section. It is hidden per default.

Default expiration date: This option allows you to set a default expiration date for all the tags to be added to the container (in this case, the tags will be deactivated). If necessary, it also allows you to send an expiration report to selected users when a tag expires (the report is sent 2 weeks and 1 week before the tags expire).

Container default trigger: Container Load is the value by default, you can modify it if needed

Linked sub-domain(s) for Phoenix: Enter your sub-domains for Phoenix, which enables you to persist 1st party cookies for longer durations to reduce the impact of ITP on your website and business.

Force Cookie SameSite setting: all cookies created through the container will get the SameSite parameter

Force Cookie Secure setting: all cookies created through the container will get the Secure parameter

*Note: this setup can be modified at any time. Simply click the 'parameter' icon:

Deduplication is the conditional activation on the confirmation page of a website, of the tag(s) responsible for the conversion.

This activation is possible by capturing and reading the parameters of your tracking URLs through TagCommander.

Within our interface, tags can be deduplicated with configurable rules depending on their position throughout the customer journey: at the beginning, at the end, or anywhere.

For example, if before converting on your site a user saw and clicked a banner served by your retargeting partner, you can set up a rule to call only that partner’s confirmation tag on the confirmation page.

The deduplication module in Commanders Act is included in your Commanders Act offer.

It allows you to create rules to fire confirmation tags (mostly but not only) based on:

• A digital marketing channel (SEM, Display, Retargeting, Affiliation, etc).

• A traffic source linked to that channel (digital marketing solutions such as Criteo, Netaffiliation, Marin, Tradedoubler, etc).

• The position of the touchpoint throughout the customer journey.

• Whether a click or impression – or both – are involved.

Note: Channel and source information is read and captured from the parameters in your tracking URLs if you use our “Commanders Act TMS” product only. However, if you have subscribed to other options of our platform (like “Enrichment”), you can use Commanders Act redirects, in which case there would be no URL parameter capture.

There are many benefits from activating the deduplication module:

• Preserving information confidentiality: by activating solely the tag of the partner responsible for a conversion, you limit information leakage about your sales, leads, order amounts, among others, to all your providers, and communicate only what pertains to a specific conversion generated by a specific solution to that very partner.

• Saving time: Commanders Act’s deduplication module allocates conversions to partners in real time, helping you save time and not having to allocate conversions manually afterwards from information obtained through reports generated by your analytics tools and your partners.

Event variables are the variables present in Commanders Act browser-side events. They are used primarily for tracking user actions (button clicks, links, etc.).

Event variables are useful if you want to send data specific to an event without having these data on your site pages as external variables.

Example: you wish to assign an event for the “Send” button on your form. The event variables could be the user’s last name, first name, email address and telephone number. These are data that are not available when the page is loaded; it only becomes available after the user has completed the fields on the form and clicked “Send”.

Event variables must be added in the Commanders Act interface before they can be used, and only for events, not tags.

Event variables must be created in the Commanders Act interface before they can be used in an event. See the “Adding event variables” article to find out how to create an event variable in the interface.

All event variables created can be used:

• To add information to the solutions embedded in Commanders Act (linking event variables and solutions is called mapping). See the “Mapping Tags’ Variables” article to find out how to map your variables in an event.

• To create activation rules for your events. See the “Adding Rules” section to find out how to create rules based on your event variables.

Additional information

Event variables must be implemented in the Commanders Act event function (tC.events).

Note: External variables that are already available on the page do not need to be implemented in your event. For example, you do not need to assign a “country” variable to an event if this information is already present in an external variable.

Here is an example of an event variable:

<a onclick="addtocart(0);{tC.event.addtocart(this, {'productID':123, 'user_email':'john@mail.com'})}">Add to cart</a>

When to add an event variable

There are two situations in which you may need to declare your variables in the event variable management interface:

• You want to implement Commanders Act events on a new site. The variables that your technical staff or technical provider implement in the site’s source code (in the tC.events function) must be declared in the interface first in order to be available to be added to your tags and rules.

• Variables are for your current event functions are missing or you want to add a new event to your site. Again, this variable must be declared in the interface first before it can be used in your tags and rules.

Adding event variables

To add an event variable, you must go to the "Data Management” > "Web Datalayer" > “Event Variables” and click “ADD VARIABLE”:

The “add” window consists of the following elements:

“Name“: the variable’s name (mandatory field)

“Type“: the variable’s type

“Description“: A description of the variable, to clarify its name (e.g. “Page template” can be the description of the variable named “env_template”)

“Detailed description“: A detailed description of the variable, to further clarify tits name (e.g. “possible values: homepage/category/product/funnel_confirmation” can be the detailed description of the “env_template” variable)

Editing or deleting variables

You can edit an internal variable by clicking the “Edit” icon and delete it by clicking the “X”:

Commanders Act Data Storage is a cookie stored on the user’s browser.

When you create data storage in the Commanders Act interface, a cookie with the same name is stored on the visitor’s browser. Data storage allows you to make use of the data it contains. Its use is described in the next articles in this section.

Data storage is useful for continually storing data about a visitor from one page to the next, from one visit to the next or for a defined period of time up to one year.

It is a cookie that stores data and allows to use it afterwards in many ways. Its uses are detailed in other articles in this section.

Additional information

Data storage that you create in the interface are first-party cookies, which are cookies set for your site’s domain name.

Data storage usage

You can use the function below to see the content of data storage created for one of your site’s pages:

tC.getCookie('cookie_name')

You can use the following function to create custom data storage: tC.setCookie('cookie_name', 'value', 'expiration')

Adding data storage

To add data storage, you must go to the “Options” tab > “Data layer” > “Data Storage” and click “ADD DATA STORAGE”:

The “add” window consists of the following fields:

Name: Name of the Data Storage Container(s) to link:A menu that unfolds and shows all available containers Lifetime: A menu to select the cookie’s lifetime Type: the type of cookie/what it is used for Value: the values the cookie will take (a and b for ab testing, many more for n testing …)

Types of data storage

Unique ID

Generates a unique ID for each visitor.

Example: Commanders Act can become your visitors’ unique reference ID to replace or enrich the ID generated by your partner solutions.

The “Do you want lifetime to be refreshed at each page view?” option changes the data storage’s lifetime based on the frequency of visits to the site. This option refreshes the data storage lifetime with each page view.

Example: you have set the data storage lifetime to 30 days and checked this option. If a user visits the page at 12 p.m. on 05/01/2015, the cookie will remain on the visitor’s computer until 12 p.m. on 05/31/2015, i.e. 30 days later. The cookie’s lifetime will refresh with each page view.

URL parameter saver

Saves the value of a URL parameter.

Example: if you want to save the value of the “utm_source” parameter, i.e. “google” in the URL https://www.site.com/landing?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc, you must enter the name of the parameter to save, which in this case would be “utm_source”

Scoring on page views

Assigns a score based on the number of page views.

Example: if you want to assign the score of “A” to visitors visiting 1 to 3 pages, a “B” to visitors visiting 4 to 7 pages and a “C” to visitors visiting 8 to 11 pages, you must enter the different ranges of page views and indicate each range’s score. The data storage value will be the score (A, B or C).

Page views counter

Saves the number of page views for a given visitor.

Example: you can use this data storage type if you want to save and send the user’s number of page views to one of your solutions or define a tag’s activation on the number of page views. Just select the “page views counter” data storage type, and the cookie’s value will increase automatically with each page view (1 page view: cookie value = “1”, 2 page views: cookie value = “2”, etc.)

A/B testing

Creating two visitor populations split 50/50.

Example: if you want to activate solution A for 50% of your visitors and solution B for the remaining 50%, all you need to do is indicate the data storage values for population A, “vendor_A” for example, and population B, “vendor_B”.

You will then be able to create a rule during the deployment process in the “Rules” section that activates solution A’s tags when the data storage value is “vendor_A”, and solution B’s tags when the value is “vendor_B”.

Note: this method is used regularly for A/B tests of two competing retargeting solutions.

N testing

Creating N visitor populations of equal size.

Example: if you want to launch an N test for 3 competing solutions, each solution will be assigned 33.3% of the traffic (100%/3); for 4 solutions, each solution will be assigned 25% of the traffic (100%/4), and so forth.

If you decide to activate solution A for 33.3% of your visitors, solution B for another 33.3% and solution C for the remaining 33.3%, you must enter the data storage value in each case. For example, “vendor_A” for solution A, “vendor_B” for solution B and “vendor_C” for solution C (1). Each value must be separated by a comma in order to be processed.

Variable Saver

Saves a variable’s value.

Example: if at some point you want to save a Commanders Act data layer variable or any other JavaScript variable present on the page, you must enter the name of the variable to save.

For example, data storage allows you to save visitors’ user_id variables in order to recognize them if they return several days after leaving your site. To save the user_id variable value, you must enter “tc_vars[“user_id”]” or “tc_vars.user_id” (both formats are accepted) in the “Variable to save” field (1). If you want to save the value of an internal variable, you must enter the value using the following format: tC.internalvars.variable_name.

Prerequisites

Before you begin creating deduplication rules in the interface, you should define the following things and inform your Commanders Act consultant:

• The digital marketing channels you wish to include in the configuration of the deduplication interface. Commanders Act allows you to configure natural and paid channels to take into account for the deduplication rules.

• The “cookie window” (lookback window) settings you wish to configure for every channel: information on the channels that drove a user to your site are stored in a cookie whose lifetime usually is of 30 days. You can, for example, set it to 15 days for channel A and 30 days for channel B.

Setting deduplication rules is a two-step procedure:

1. Defining and configuring channel and sources recognition in the interface.

2. Applying deduplication and other rules to activate tags according to your needs.

/!\ If you wish to track impressions, you need to make sure a Commanders Act subdomain has been created for you and have your account manager confirm that the feature is enabled. Please note that setting up the subdomain and tracking impressions with our pixel is a paid service.

Defining channels and sources

1. Go in the menu "Data Management" > "Web Datalayer" > "Deduplication Channels"

   

The Channel Identification menu will open, then

1. Click the ADD CHANNEL button.

2. Your channel will be displayed afterwards in the channels list.

   

When you click “ADD CHANNEL”, a new window will be displayed to allow you to configure a new paid channel (natural channels are set-up by default).

You can configure channels with one or more “channel” parameters and one or more “source” parameters (or no “source” parameters at all).

Configuring a channel with a single "channel" parameter

1. In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.

   

In the menu that appears (see below)(2), select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters)(2).

Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter)(3).

Enter the value that will identify the channel (4). /!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter: utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt. You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):

Click ADD (5) on the line of the channel declaration to confirm the creation of the condition.

Click SAVE (6) at the bottom, right-hand corner of the window.

Configuring a channel with a single "channel" parameter and a "source" parameter

1. In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.

   
2. In the menu that appears, select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters).

3. Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter).

4. Enter the value that will identify the channel.

/!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter:

utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt

You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):

1. Click ADD on the line of the channel declaration to confirm the creation of the condition.

2. Click the pencil icon next to “Source: Will not be captured” to modify settings for the source to be captured.

   
3. Select the capture method:

   

• Taking all: the entire value of the URL parameter containing the source will be captured. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=criteo” and you use “Taking all”, all the parameter’s value will be taken. In this case, “criteo”.

• Splitting: splits the parameter’s value and takes the block you want. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=retargeting|criteo|123456&(…)” and you use the setting depicted in the image below, you will obtain “criteo”.

  
• Cutting: cuts a part of the parameter’s value and returns it. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=criteo&”, you will obtain “cri” with the setting below.

  

1. Select the parameter containing the source that will be captured.

2. Save

3. Add the channel

   

This will allow you to have the tag fire depending on the value of the channel AND the value of the source.

Configuring a channel with two or more "channel" parameters and a single "source" parameter

1. In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.

   
2. In the menu that appears, select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters).

3. Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter).

4. Enter the value that will identify the channel. Repeat these steps for as many possible combinations of parameters/values that could identify a channel. In the example below, if the utm_medium parameter in the URL takes the values “Retargeting”, “rtg”, “RTG”, or “retargeting”, the channel called/labeled “Retargeting” (1) will be recognized.

/!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter:

utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt

You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):

1. You can also create conditions based on the “AND” operator. For example: if the UTM_MEDIUM parameter’s values are “Retargeting” or “rtg” AND the UTM_CONTENT’s parameter’s value is “email”, then, the Retargeting channel will be recognized (see second screenshot below).

   

If you wish to base your conditions on sources too (B), for every condition defining a channel, you will need to select a source.

When everything is setup, click ADD in the bottom, right-hand corner of the window.

Configuring condition groups with multiple "channel[s]/source[s]" combinations

In order to create groups of conditions combining “blocks” made of multiple channel+source parameters, follow the steps in C) (above), according to your needs. When you have created your first “block”, click the “ADD CONDITION GROUP” button to create a new set of parameters to be configured (1).

In the example below, the Retargeting channel will be recognized by the interface when either of the two conditions* is met.

*Condition 1: if utm_medium = “retargeting” or “rtg” and the source is captured and matches the configured value (said value is configured in the rules step).

OR

*Condition 2: if utm_medium = retargeting and utm_medium = email and the source matches the configured (said value is configured in the rules step).

Note:

You can select the default parameters (below) but also enter custom parameters or use the “Advanced” option to add custom JavaScript.

Example of custom parameter: “gclid” (SEM)

When you connect Google Adwords and Google Analytics, Google allows you to automatically link your two accounts by adding the “gclid” tracking parameter in your URL. This parameter replaces “utm_source = SEM” and indicates that traffic is SEM-originated. You can use a custom parameter to set this up.

When your channels and source-capturing methods are defined, you will return to the channel list and options.

Configuring a channel based on MixCommander Tracking

You just need to write the iD values available on Mixcommander side. For each value you have to declare a channel. For example for the channel AFFILIATION, you have to create as many channels as IDs available on the mapping table ("Affiliation", "aff", "affiliate"). That's why it's very important when you create a campaign to use always the same id. Example : chn=affiliation.

Channel prioritization and cookie window configuration

Channel prioritization

You can change the order of paid channels and move them up and down according to the priority you want to give to each one of them. Channels are detected in the exact same order they are listed in the interface and do not exclude each other. So, in the event in which two or more conditions are true, the last condition will be taken into account.

For example, if you have two channels (Email Retargeting and Retargeting) configured as below.

Email Retargeting

Retargeting

The interface will only pay attention to the last condition (if utm_medium = retargeting) and will ignore the rest.

So if you have channels sharing one or more conditions, it is necessary that you place the channels with the least conditions first and those with the most conditions at the bottom of the queue so that all conditions are taken into consideration.

To reorder the channels, please use the handles to the left of the channel’s label.

Cookie Window Configuration

1. You can change the order of paid channels and move them up and down according to the priority you want to give to each one of them.

2. Check this box if the channel considers clicks.

3. Define the lifetime to the cookie storing click information (in number of days).

4. Check this box if the channel considers views.

5. Define the lifetime to the cookie storing views information (in number of days).

6. Define the number of touch points you want to store in the deduplication cookie. You can store no less than ten and no more than 50. The larger the amount of touchpoints, the heavier the cookie’s weight.

7. Enter the keywords for SEO brand identification, the full word or part of if (you can choose between “contains” or Regex). Declaring keywords is useful to differentiate branded and unbranded SEO in case one of both should be taken into consideration in the deduplication rules. Since some browsers, such as Google, have ceased to provide keywords – this is referred to as “not provided”-, the branded and unbranded SEO distinction is less complete than it used to be.

8. Add more keywords if necessary.

9. See the list of your keywords and how they are captured.

10. Configure your impression tracking pixel’s URL by replacing Channel with one of the channels you created and source with the desired parameter value.

    

/!\ If you wish to track impressions, you need to make sure a Commanders Act subdomain has been created for you and have your account manager confirm that the feature is enabled. Please note that setting up the subdomain and tracking impressions with our pixel is a paid service.

For more information on these fees please contact your account manager. For more information about Commanders Act’s view pixel, please refer to the “Tracking impressions” and “Structure of Commanders Act's impression pixel” articles.

Setting up deduplication rules

When your channels are defined in the interface and you have specified whether the parameter storing the source of traffic will be considered or not to launch a tag, you will need to go to the “RULES” step in the Commanders Act TMS interface.

Set-up your deduplication rules by following these steps:

1.When on the RULES step, click the “Deduplication” button on the menu to the left.

2.In the new window, click “ADD DEDUPLICATION RULE” to open the rule configuration window. If you click “MANAGE CHANNEL(S)” you will be taken to the Channel Identification interface again 3.When the window opens, select the tag on which you wish to apply a rule from the dropdown menu.Please note: Deduplication is used on confirmation tags only.

4.Select the touchpoint’s position in the customer journey (beginning, end, anywhere).

• First refers to the first touchpoint at the beginning of the customer journey (SEM/Google in the illustration below). A rule based on this position would call Google’s tag on the confirmation page and allocate the conversion to it.

• Last refers to the last touchpoint before the conversion, at the end of the customer journey (if we consider paid traffic, it would be RETARGETING/Criteo in the image below, and Direct Access overall). A rule based on this position, would call Criteo’s tag on the confirmation page and allocate the conversion to it.

• Any refers to any place throughout the customer journey (in the example below, all paid traffic solutions contributing to the conversion would be called on the confirmation page. That is Google, Tradedoubler and Criteo).

  

5. Select the nature of the touch point (click, view or both) you wish to include in your conversion attribution rules. For example, if you wish to consider only clicks, check that box and leave the view box unchecked. If you wish to consider them both, you should check both boxes.

6. Select your channel(s) (you must declare them first in the Channel Identification section; you can select more than one channel).

7. Select whether it corresponds or not to your channel.

8.State whether the source is ignored or (if you configured it to be captured in the channel identification interface) not. If not, define if all or only a part of it will be captured and if it has to match or not a certain value.

9.Enter the value of the parameter that will be compared to what was set in the interface, during the channel identification step, when you chose to capture the source.

10. Click “ADD” to add the rule.

After you create your rules, they will appear in the rules summary.

If your wish to edit a rule, click the pencil icon to the right on the line of each rule. If you wish to delete it, click the trash can.

The rules summary interface has a Deduplication column. A check mark will indicate what tags are deduplicated.

Adding tags necessary to the proper operation of the deduplication module

In order to enable the deduplication module, you will need to place the “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” and “Commanders Act– Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tags inside your container.

The “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag

The “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag allows you to collect conversion-related data (order ID and amount) and display it in the “By Tag” and “By Conversion” deduplication reports explained here.

You will then need to go to the tag library and add the tag to the container you placed in the confirmation page(s).

In the “Edit” section, map the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag with the corresponding variables from your data layer:

• #TCIDORDER# (mandatory field) must be mapped with the data layer variable that collects the conversion ID (ex: tc_vars[“order_id”]).

• #TCAMOUNTORDER# (optional field) must be mapped with the data layer variable that collects the conversion amount (ex: tc_vars[“order_amount”]). Whether you collect the order amounts excluding taxes or all taxes included is your choice.

  

In the “Rules” section, add a condition to your “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag to call it only on your website’s confirmation page(s) (“confirmation page” perimeter).

The “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” tag

Important note: Before adding this tag, you need to make sure that a “commander1.com” subdomain has been added to your account from the “Admin”>”Domain management” interface (only administrators have access to this area). If the subdomain has not yet been created, please contact our support department (support@commandersact.com).

The “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” tag lets you retrieve all the touch points from a user’s customer journey. These touch points are collected on the “commander1.com” subdomain that is associated to your account. This tag is indispensable if you track impressions for your deduplication rules.

Go to the tag library and add the tag to the container you placed in the confirmation page(s).

In the “Edit” section, make sure that the tag does indeed call your “commander1.com” subdomain (scriptElt1.src = “//domain.commander1.com/dg3/”). If it is not the case, please contact our support department (support@commandersact.com). No additional configuration is required for this tag.

In the “Rules” section, add a condition to your “Commanders Act– Get dedup cookie” tag to call it on all but the conversion page among the conversion funnel pages. This will allow you to retrieve all information stored in the “commander1.com” subdomain (especially impressions) when a user engages in the purchase process. Your tags will thus be called depending on the user touch points that are identified.

All modifications done on the containers are recorded on the Modification History page You can access to this menu by the tab Administration => Modification History

The “RULES” step allows you to create your tag activation rules.

You can manage how your tags and events are called by using the tabs displayed in the left menu:

• The “Summary” tab provides you with an overview of the created rules per tag and event.

• The “Triggers” tab allow you to create triggers for your tags. Triggers are rules allowing to execute tags on different conditions: container loaded, DOM Ready, clicks, form submissions, scroll and custom events.

• The “Perimeters” tab allows you to create perimeters for your tags. Perimeters are the page types for which you want to activate your tags (for example: the homepage, “my account” page, product page, etc.).

• The “Constraints” tab allows you to create constraints for your tags and events. Constraints are rules based on criteria other than the page type (for example: rules based on visitor status, the type of browser or device, etc.) Note: You must use constraints if you want to create a rule for an event.

• The “Deduplication” tab allows you to implement deduplication rules for your tags.

• The "Privacy Banners Constraints" tab allows you to setup rules for display your privacy banners

To display container statistics click “More”, next to the blue Edit button while on the Dashboard, in the container list section.

These statistics allow you to monitor container calls, view important information and make sure they continue to be called on your site.

You can find your container list on the left side of the “Container firing” interface.

Click a container’s name to see its statistics: the deployed version number, the live version number, the last modification date and the tags’ default expiration period.

You can also display each container’s call statistics. These statistics are divided into four time periods: last day, last 7 days, last 30 days, and last year. Pass the pointer along the curve to see display detailed statistics.

A Website’s performance is key to SEO and user experience; however, the increasing amount of tags used on websites nowadays has an impact on loading times.

In this context, tags’ performance has become a strategic matter.

Commanders Act's “TagPerformance” module offers the possibility to measure your site’s performance based on the tags that are placed on it. It acts as a complementary tool to those used by IT departments to measure loading times of websites’ key elements (images, CSS …)

TagPerformance’s main features include:

• A measuring tag executed on the end client’s browser and not by a robot.

• Analysis of the START RENDER, DOM READY and DOM LOADED events to measure performance.

• The possibility to visualize significant variations in tags and page types, free from the noise resulting from the analysis of micro-variations.

• Information on loading times of partner solutions in relation with the average loading times of other solutions to ensure loading times are correct.

• Data segmentation to identify sources of problems, if any, or to focus on a particular segment: container, page type (product, home page), device (mobile, tablet, PC), OS and browser.

TagPerformance is one of the additional modules for the Commanders Act product: if you wish to use it on your website(s), please contact your account manager or reach out to our Support Department (support@commandersact.com)

Metrics

TagPerformance allows you to analyze three events:

• START RENDER or FIRST PAINT: This is when the first element is displayed on the page.

This metric is key to bounce rates (if initial visual elements take too long to load, users will most often leave a site) and SEO (“dwell time” metric).

• DOM READY: this is when a page’s structure is loaded and analyzed by the browser.

• PAGE LOADING TIME or ONLOAD or DOM LOADED: this is when the page’s content has finished loading. This metric is useful for SEO.

Loading order of a web page’s elements:

Example:

Page A and page B take both 12ms to load; DOM loaded is the same for both of them. However, Start Render and DOM Ready events are optimized for page A but not for page B.

How it works ?

• The page loads with the Commanders Act container.

• The Commanders Act container calls the tags placed on the page and loads the “Commanders Act – TagPerformance” tag two seconds after the DOM Loaded event.

• The “Commanders Act – TagPerformance” tag captures information provided by the browser thanks to the Navigation Timing API, which is compatible with 88% of existing browsers. The information that is captured includes:

• Generic information about the page: Start Render, DOM Ready and DOM Loaded

• Information about every tag that is executed on the page: hits’ aggregated loading time before Start Render, DOM Ready and DOM Loaded happen (separately).

Example:

This is the structure of a page from a website:

“Tag 1” sends 4 hits:

• One that loads before the Start Render event (300ms)

• One that loads before the DOM Ready event at (400ms)

• One that starts loading before DOM Ready and finishes loading during the DOM Loaded event (600ms)

• One that loads after the DOM Loaded event (100ms)

“Tag” 2 sends 2 hits:

• One that loads during the Start Render event (700ms)

• One that loads before the DOM Loaded event (200ms)

With the “TagPerformance” tag, Commanders Act will count the following loading times for tag 1:

• Hits’ aggregated loading time before the Start Render event (300ms).

• Hits’ aggregated loading time before the DOM Ready event: 1300ms (the first and second hit’s respective loading times of 300ms and 400ms are stored and added to the 600ms loading time of hit three, which is sent during the DOM Ready event).

• Hits’ aggregated time before the DOM Loaded event: 1300ms (all hits’ loading times are stored: 300ms, 600ms and 600ms for hits one, two and three, respectively).

• Total loading time of tag1 (1400ms)

The “TagPerformance” tag will count the following loading times for tag 2:

• Hits’ aggregated loading time before the Start Render event (700ms)

• Hits’ aggregated loading time before the DOM Ready event (700ms)

• Hit’s aggregated loading time before the DOM Loaded event (900ms)

• Total loading time of tag1 (900ms)

It will also count generic loading times on the page:

• Start Render (700 ms)

• DOM Ready (2000 ms)

• DOM Loaded (2800 ms)

All this data will populate TagPerformance’s reports.

Perimeters and Constraints are two methods to conditionally fire your tags.

• Under the Perimeter panel, tags fire if at least one rule is true.

• Under the Constraints panel, tags fire if all rules are true.

Variable

The “Variables” tab allows you to create rules based on your data layer variables (external variables, internal variables, events attributes, events variables):

Condition and behavior

“If Variable Equals“: Tag activated if the variable equals the specified value.

“If Variable is Not Equal“: Tag activated if the variable differs from the specified value.

“OR Condition (One Variable)“: Tag activated if the variable equals at least one of the specified values.

“NAND Condition (One Variable)“: Tag activated if the variable equals two or more specified values.

“OR Condition (Up To Six Possible Variables)“: Tag activated if at least one of the variables equals the specified value.

“AND Condition (Up To Six Possible Variables)“: Tag activated if all the variables equal all the specified values.

“Greater than condition“: Tag activated if the variable is greater than the specified value.

“Less than condition“: Tag activated if the variable is less than the specified value.

“If Variable Contains“: Tag activated if the variable contains the specified value.

“If Variable Does Not Contain“: Tag activated if the variable does not contain the specified value.

“If Variable Matches“: Tag activated if the variable matches the specified value (regular expressions allowed: * to match any character and ^ for “variable begins with”).

“If Variable Doesn’t Match“: Tag activated if the variable does not match the specified value (regular expressions allowed: * to match any character and ^ for “variable begins with”).

In which case using “external variables” for the mapping?

When you want to create a rule based on a tc_vars from the data layer implemented on your website.

Example: your technical team has implemented an env_country variable, and you want to create a rule based on it:

In which case using “internal variables” for the mapping?

When you want to create a rule based on a variable that you have created by yourself, from the internal variable interface.

In which case using “event variables” for the mapping?

When you want to create a rule based on a variable specific to an event.

Example: The following event is implemented in your site’s source code:

To call a tag only if the product name is “iphone”, you have to select the event variable named “product_name” and configure it in the following manner:

Cookie

The “Cookie” tab allows you to create rules based on cookies you have previously created in the Commanders Act interface or which are available for your site’s domain name (first-party cookies).

Condition and behavior

“If Cookie Equals“: Tag activated if the cookie’s value equals the specified value.

“If Cookie Is Not Equal“: Tag activated if the cookie’s value differs from the specified value.

“If Cookie Contains“: Tag activated if the cookie’s value contains the specified value. In case of multiple values : enter all the values in the field separated by a comma ",". Don't use space between.

“If Cookie Doesn’t Contain“: Tag activated if the cookie’s value does not contain the specified value. In case of multiple values : enter all the values in the field separated by a comma ",". don't use space between.

Example with multiple values: In order to call a tag when your “consent_status” cookie equals “exempt” or "optin", you must select the “If Cookie Equals” rule and configure it in the following manner:

URL

This tab allows you to create rules based on your site’s URLs (note: we recommend that you use rules based on variables instead of URLs since the rule will become obsolete if your URL changes in the future):

Condition and behavior

“If URL Equals“: Tag activated if the URL equals the specified value.

“If URL Contains“: Tag activated if the URL contains the specified value. In case of multiple values : enter all the values in the field separated by a comma ",". Don't use space between.

“If URL Doesn’t Contain“: Tag activated if the URL does not contain the specified value.

“If URL Matches“: Tag activated if the URL matches the specified value (regular expressions allowed: * to match any character and ^ for “variable begins with”).

“If URL Doesn’t Match“: Tag activated if the URL does not match the specified value (regular expressions allowed: * to match any character and ^ for “variable begins with”).

Example: to call a tag when your URL indicates that the user is on the product page (providing your product page URLs are all structured the same: https://www.site.com/$category$/$subcategory$/product_$product_ID$), you have to select the “If URL Matches” rule and configure it in the following manner:

Browser

This tab allows you to create rules based on browsers.

Condition and behavior

“If Browser Is“: Tag activated if the browser is (choose from the list).

“If Browser Is Not“: Tag activated if the browser is not (choose from the list).

Mobile

This tab allows you to create rules based on the type of device.

Condition and behavior

“If Device / OS Is“: Tag activated if the device is (choose from the list).

“If Device / OS Is Not“: Tag activated if the device is not (choose from the list).

“If Device / OS Is Android Tablet“: Tag activated if the device is an Android tablet.

“If Device / OS Is Android Mobile“: Tag activated if the device is an Android mobile device.

“If Device / OS Is Not Android Tablet“: Tag activated if the device is not an Android tablet.

“If Device / OS Is Not Android Mobile“: Tag activated if the device is not an Android mobile device.

Example: to prevent a tag from being called on an Android mobile device, you must select the “If Device Is Not Android Mobile” rule and configure it:

DataCommander

This tab allows you to create rules based on the type of audience segments created in DataCommander.

Condition and behavior

“DataCommander OR condition (up to six variables)“: Tag activated if at least one of the audiences equals the specified value.

“DataCommander AND condition (up to six variables)“: Tag activated if all the audiences equal all the specified values.

“DataCommander Event activation“: Tag activated on an event

Advanced rules

This tab allows you to create all types of advanced rules. For example, you can create sampling rules or even “Custom” rules:

Condition and behaviour

“Sampling (1/X) (Page Based)“: Tag activated in X% of page views.

“Sampling (1/X) (Session Based)” : Tag activated in X% of visits.

“Sampling (1/X) (Visitor Based)“: Tag activated for X% of visitors.

“(A or B or C or D or E) AND (F or G or H or I or J)“: Tag activated if at least one of the variables in the first group AND at least one of the variables in the second group equal the specified values.

“(A and B and C and D and E) AND (F or G or H or I or J)“: Tag activated if all the variables in the first group AND at least one of the variables in the second group equal the specified values.

“(A and B and C and D and E) OR (F and G and H and I and J)“: Tag activated if all the variables in the first group OR all the variables in the second group equal the specified values.

“(A and B and C and D and E) OR (F or G or H or I or J)“: Tag activated if all the variables in the first group OR at least one of the variables in the second group equal the specified values.

“(A different than VALUE1) OR (B different than VALUE2)“: Tag activated if the first variable is not equal to a value OR the second variable is not equal to a value.

“(A different than VALUE1) OR (B equals VALUE2)“: Tag activated if the first variable is not equal to a value OR the second variable is equal to a value.

“(A different than VALUE1) AND (B different than VALUE2)“: Tag activated if the first variable is not equal to a value AND the second variable is not equal to a value.

“(A different than VALUE1) AND (B equals VALUE2)“: Tag activated if the first variable is not equal to a value AND the second variable equals a value.

“In Array“: Tag activated if the variable is present in the variable array.

“In Sub Array“: Tag activated if the variable is present in a variable array key.

“Array Intersection”: Tag activated if two variables from two variable arrays are equal.

“Custom“: Custom rule (to define in JavaScript).

Example: In order to call a tag for 25% of site visitors, you must select the “Sampling (1/X) (Visitor Based)” and configure it in the following manner:

If you notice that a tag is slowing down your pages, please try the following:

• Have the tag load after the DOM Loaded event. Caution: not all tags are compatible with this method and the more you delay a tag’s execution the more you loose data in your reports.

This code block allows calling a tag during the DOM Loaded event:

tC_ready = function(){

// Code du tag

}

if (window.addEventListener)

window.addEventListener(‘load’, tC_ready, false)

else if (window.attachEvent)

window.attachEvent(‘onload’, tC_ready)

• Get in touch with the tag’s editor and request they improve their tag in terms of size or server response. Note: it is possible to include the tag’s JavaScript file in the Commanders Act container while on the “EDIT” tab from the Commanders Act interface.
• Sample the tag from the “RULES” tab from the Commanders Act interface. This will improve the average loading time of your site’s pages.
• Shifting the tag’s execution order from the “GENERATION” tab from the Commanders Act interface (place the one taking longer to load at the end of the queue).
• Use a timeout on your tags from the “GENERATION” tab from the Commanders Act interface. This feature interrupts the tag’s execution if it takes too long to load.
• Deactivate the tag from the “GENERATION” tab from the Commanders Act interface
• Use your tag in a serverside configuration (this entails activating an additional module from the Commanders Act product, please contact your account manager or our Support Department for further information). Caution: not all tags are compatible with this method.

For more detailed information on how to set up these methods, please contact our Support Department (support@commandersact.com).

Report by conversion

The “Report by Conversion” report provides information pertaining to the tags that were called for every conversion on your site, according to the rules you defined in the rules section, more specifically deduplication rules. Data is collected by the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.

Access

To access the report, please click the “Deduplication by conversions” entry from the Health > Website Monitoring menu.

Interface Description

Calendar

The calendar allows you to select a period of time to display deduplicated tag calls. There are eight predefined periods (Yesterday, Last Week, Last 30 days, Last Month, Last Quarter, Month-to-Date, Quarter-to-Date, Year-To-Date) and you can customize the period you wish to see tag calls for. You also have the possibility to compare periods to have a clearer vision of the way tags’ performance has evolved from one period to another.

“Report by Conversion” Table

This table displays the number of tag calls for every conversion:

• “Conversion ID”column: displays your conversions’ IDs.

• “Date”column: displays a conversions’ time and date.

• “Revenue”column: displays the conversions’ amounts (including or excluding taxes, depending on the amount you chose to collect with the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag).

• “Tags” column: lists all tags that were called per conversion. Rules affecting tags are all considered, especially deduplication rules.

• “Detail”column: it displays a popin with the detailed customer journey per conversion. The popin is made of four columns.

1. Position: displays, in descending order, the position of every touch point within the customer journey associated to the conversion.

2. Type: displays the touchpoint’s type (click or impression).

3. Channel/Source: displays the channel (lever) and source (solution) corresponding to every touch point.

4. Date: displays every touch point’s time and date.

The search engine above the table allows you to easily and quickly find a conversion simply by typing its ID.

The “Advanced Filtering” button lets you filter results by tag to find a conversion faster.

Exporting the “Report by Conversion” table

The “export” icon on top of the table allows you to export the “Report by Conversion” report:

• If you click “CSV” you will receive the CSV report directly in your mailbox.

• If you click “Email”, you will be able to enter the email addresses of people you wish to send the CSV report to.

Report by tag

The “Report by Tag” report allows you to see, over a specific period of time, the number and evolution of calls to the tags that were placed on your confirmation page(s), more specifically those of deduplicated tags. Data is collected by the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.

Access

To access the report, please click the “Deduplication by tags” entry from the Health > Website Monitoring menu.

Interface Description

Calendar

The calendar allows you to select a period of time to display deduplicated tag calls. There are eight predefined periods (Yesterday, Last Week, Last 30 days, Last Month, Last Quarter, Month-to-Date, Quarter-to-Date, Year-To-Date) and you can customize the period you wish to see tag calls for. You also have the possibility to compare periods to have a clearer vision of the way tags’ performance has evolved from one period to another.

“Tag calls’ evolution” graph

The “Tag calls’ evolution” graph displays calls to the tags checked in the “Tag Calls Detailed” table. If you wish to display data for other tags, simply check the corresponding box and click the table’s refresh icon. A curve with a specific color is associated to every tag. When you click the tag’s name in the graph’s legend, the curve corresponding to the tag whose name you clicked will disappear or reappear.

The arrow in the graph’s upper right-hand corner allows you to unfold or collapse the latter.

The button in the graph’s bottom right-hand corner lets you see calls to deduplicated tags on a daily or weekly basis.

“Tag Calls Detailed” table

Tags listed in the “Tag Calls Detailed” table are tags placed on pages where the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag was included too.

The table displays the number of calls that were issued:

• The “Conversions” column indicates the number of times a tag was called over a given period of time. This number considers deduplication and other rules placed on your tags.

• The “Conversion Share” column displays the percentage of conversions a given tag participated in, according to the exact same rules as those considered in the “Conversions”

• The “Detail” column allows you to see the IDs of conversions a tag was called for, as well as the corresponding time, date and amount (including or excluding taxes, depending on the amount you chose to collect with the “Commanders Act –Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.

Defining channels and sources

You work with Retargeting solutions and your tracking URLs look like:

• mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=Criteo

• mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=MyThings

Where the utm_medium parameter stores the channel and utm_source stores the source (namely your partners).

In order to fire only the tag of the partner to whom the sale is attributed, you would need to follow these steps:

Defining Channels and Sources

Adding a Channel: click “Add Channel”

Name the channel and add the parameter that will store the value defining Retargeting (Add Condition)

Define the condition (Parameter Match or Not and the comparison value) and specify whether or not the value of the parameter containing the source will be captured (pencil icon).

Select the capture mode of the parameter containing the source (the whole value, or parts of it), then confirm the channel identification condition by clicking ADD.

Save the source-capturing settings and save the Channel configuration (Click “SAVE”).

Setting up deduplication rules

Now that you have defined the retargeting channel, you can define firing rules for your retargeting tags Criteo and MyThings.

Click the edition tab and go to the Rules step. Once there, click “Deduplication” on the menu to the left.

In the new window, click “ADD DEDUPLICATION RULE” to open the rule configuration window.

When the window opens, select the Criteo OneTag Conversion tag from the dropdown menu (3).

Select “Last” among the options relating to the touch point’s position in the customer journey. This will fire the tag if it is the last paid solution in the customer journey, now you need to define if it is the last paid click, impression or both (4).

Let’s say you want to launch the Criteo OneTag Conversion tag only if it is the last paid click. Select “click” from the options (5).

Select whether it corresponds or not to your channel (6).

Select “RETARGETING” from the dropdown menu. All channels that you have defined will become available in this menu (7).

Select “EQUALS” for the source. When you configured the channel you indicated that the source of traffic (partner) would be captured by “taking all” the value of the “utm_source” URL parameter. Since your tracking URL for Criteo looks like this:

www.mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=Criteo

You will need to select “EQUALS”.

Enter the value of the parameter that will be compared to what was set in the interface (“Criteo”) (9)

Click “ADD” to add the rule (10).

Repeat these steps for your MyThings Conversion tag.

When both your rules are created, they will appear in the rule summary.

If your wish to edit any of them, click the pencil icon to the right on the line of each rule. If you wish to delete it, click the trash can.

The rules summary interface has a Deduplication column. A check mark will indicate that your two tags are deduplicated.

Default triggers

You can select a default trigger in the container options.

This means that each time you will add a tag to your container, the default trigger(s) will apply on this tag.

To select your default trigger(s), go in the container options, “advanced” part:

Container loaded

This trigger allows calling tags when the container is loaded on a page. It is the default trigger for all the tags you add to your container. This means that the tag will only be called when your JavaScript container loads on your site, but it will not be the case for other event types (such as a click, a page change within an “single page applications” environment, etc.). In order to trigger tags when a container loads on your page, all you need to do is selecting them from the list.

DOM Ready

This trigger allows calling tags when the page’s structure is built (on the “DOM Ready” event). To launch tags on this event, all you need to do is selecting them. They will be called on the DOM Ready event when the page loads.

Click

This trigger allows calling tags whenever elements of the page are clicked. Example: if you would like to call a tag when a user clicks a button (ex: “add to cart” button), select the desired tag(s) and enter the code allowing to target the button or the link on your page in the “CSS Selector” field.

Must know:

• To retrieve the CSS selector, open your browser’s console and use its targeting tool to target one of your page’s elements. Then right-click, the code appearing in your console, click “Copy” and “Copy selector”. All you have to do next is pasting this code in the interface.

• You can enter many selectors in the interface; you will have to separate them with commas.

Form submission

This trigger allows calling tags when a user submits a form properly filled. Example: when they click the “submit” button or press the Enter key. To call a tag when a form is submitted, follow the same steps you followed to call a tag upon a click. Indicate your trigger’s name (ex: “account creation confirmation”), select the desired tag(s) and enter the code allowing targeting the form submission button on your page in the “CSS Selector” field.

Scroll

This trigger allows calling tags when a user scrolls the page vertically or horizontally. In order to execute a tag on scrolling, you will need to enter your trigger’s name (ex: “30% vertical scrolling”), select the desired tag(s), choose the scrolling type (horizontal/vertical) from the dropdown menu, the expected scrolling and measuring unit (page percentage or pixels).

Custom

This trigger allows calling tags whenever a Commanders Act event function (tC.event.xxx) is identified on the page. If you wish to execute a tag on a custom eventm, please indicate your trigger’s name (ex: “add to cart click”), select the desired tag(s) and enter the implemented event function’s name (ex : “tC.event.add_to_cart”).

AMP Definition

AMP, which stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, is a technology issued from the open source Digital News Initiative (DNI) between Google and European publishers. AMP is a format allowing the creation of optimized mobile content in a bid to improve user experience.

If you wish to learn more about AMPs, click the following links:

[FR] https://www.ampproject.org/fr/learn/about-amp/

[EN] https://www.ampproject.org/learn/about-amp/

Implementing Commanders Act on AMPs

AMP blocks synchronous JavaScript files called on your websites in order to increase mobile pages’ loading speed. For your Commanders Act container to be compatible, you need to adapt the way you set it up to be compliant with AMP’s requirements.

Below, you will find an example showing how to set up a Commanders Act container on your AMP pages. We recommend using the <amp-analytics> tag (https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/components/amp-analytics) to define your data layer and the container.

Important: This operation calls for Commanders Act’s API and thus requires that a server-side container be setup in Commanders Act’s user interface.

Setup example with analytics tag

<!doctype html>
<html amp lang=”en”>
<head>
<meta charset=”utf-8″>
<title>Commanders Act – AMP Analytics</title>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.ampproject.org/article-metadata.html” />
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1″>
<!– Mandatory execution of the AMP Analytics Script “https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js” –> 
<script async custom-element=”amp-analytics”
src=”https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-analytics-0.1.js“></script>
<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript>
<script async src=”https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js”></script>
</head>
<body
<amp-analytics id=”commandersact”>
<!– JSON data structure containing the TagCommander data layer –> 
<script type=”application/json”>
{
“vars”: {
“tC_SiteID”: “3503”,
“tC_ContainerID”: “1”,
“env_template” : “homepage”,
“env_work” : “prod”,
“env_device” : “m”,
“env_country” : “IT”,
“page_name” : “amp_homepage”,
“user_id” : “”,
“user_newcustomer” : “”,
“order_id” : “”
},
<!– Call to Commanders Act’s API (server-side) –> 
“requests”: {
“tC_BaseURL“: “//serverside${tC_SiteID}.tagcommander.com/${tC_ContainerID}/”,
<!– Page variables mentioned in the “tC_PageTrack” element –> 
“tC_PageTrack“: “${tC_BaseURL}?&env_template=${template}&env_work=${work_environment}&env_device=${device}&env_country=${country}&page_name=${page_name}&user_id=${user_id}&user_newcustomer=${newcustomer}&order_id=${order_id}”,
<!– Event variables mentioned in the “tC_EventTrack” element. Note: “scroll” and other such variables are natively proposed in AMP pages–> 
“tC_EventTrack“: “${tC_PageTrack}&scrollY=${scrollTop}&scrollX=${scrollLeft}&height=${availableScreenHeight}&width=${availableScreenWidth}&scrollBoundV=${verticalScrollBoundary}&scrollBoundH=${horizontalScrollBoundary}${eventLabel}”
},
<!– Additional parameters mentioned in the “extraUrlParams” element. Note: the clientId function creates a unique ID per visitor (different from the regular TCIDs)–> 
“extraUrlParams”: {
“TCID_AMP”: “${clientId(TCID_AMP)}”,
“path”: “${ampdocUrl}”,
“type”: “${type|default:page}”,
“platform”: “AMP”,
“r”: “${random}”
},
<!– Execution of Commanders Act hits on the “triggers” element. “Pageview” sends the hit to the page viewed, the “clickPings” trigger sends the hit to an event defined in the “selector” –>
“triggers”: {
“pageview”: {
“on”: “visible”,
“request”: “tC_PageTrack”,
“vars”: {
“type”: “page”
}
},
“clickPings”: {
“on”: “click”,
“selector”: “.tC_events”,
“request”: “tC_EventTrack”,
“vars”: {
“type”: “event”
}
}
}
}
</script>
</amp-analytics>
<h1 id=”header”>AMP Page</h1>
<!– data-vars-event-label2 allows to collect additional variables, such as event variables –>
<span id=”event-test” class=”tC_events” data-vars-event-label2=”22″>
Click here to generate an event
</span>
</body>

AMPs also allow you to set up your tag management tool through an iframe. Please note that if the iframe has not loaded within 5 seconds, it will not be called. You will find below an a setup example through an iframe:

Setup example with iframe

<!doctype html>
<html amp lang=”en”>
<head>
<meta charset=”utf-8″>
<title>Commanders ACT – Serverside – AMP Analytics</title>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.ampproject.org/article-metadata.html” />
<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1″>
<!– Mandatory execution of the AMP iframe script “https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-iframe-0.1.js ” –>
<script async custom-element=”amp-iframe” src=”https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-iframe-0.1.js”></script>
<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript>
<script async src=”https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js”></script>
</head>
<body>
<!– Call to the TagCommander iframe “https://academy.commandersact.com/AMP/iframe.php” containing the data layer variables. Note: the iframe must belong to a different domain from that of the website (except if the allow-same-origin parameter is added) and be https –>
<amp-iframe width=1 height=1 src=”https://academy.commandersact.com/AMP/iframe.php? env_template=homepage&env_work=prod&env_device=m&env_country=IT&page_name=amp_homepage&user_id=&user_newcustomer=&order_id=” sandbox=”allow-scripts allow-same-origin” layout=”fixed” frameborder=”0″>
<!– Adding content to the iframe is mandatory (a pixel in this case)–>
<amp-img src=”https://academy.commandersact.com/AMP/pixel.gif” height=1 width=1 layout=”fill” placeholder></amp-img>25
</amp-iframe>
<h1 id=”header”>AMP Page</h1>
<span id=”event-test” class=”tC_events” data-vars-event-label2=”22″>
Click here to generate an event
</span>
</body>
</html>

Commanders Act offers dedicated Plug-Ins for all major Single Page Application (SPA) frameworks. Please refer to the Plug-In documentation on GitHub for detailed installation instructions for React.

The TagPerformance tag must be included in each and every one of your containers.

If you have many containers on a given page and as many TagPerformance tags, only one hit containing information about your tags will be sent.

It is not necessary to place it in a particular order within your containers, as it will automatically execute two seconds after the DOM Loaded event, that is to say, after all the other tags have loaded.

• In the tag library, select the “Commanders Act – TagPerformance” tag.

  
• There is nothing to configure in the “EDIT” step: Generate a new container version and deploy it.

  

Advanced – Customizing the “TagPerformance” tag:

• It is possible to force-measure a tag’s performance (for example, that of a tag outside the container, that of a custom tag whose URL paths are not recognized by Commanders Act or that of a tag that is not present in the Commanders Act TMS tag library). If you wish to measure a new tag’s performance, place the following code block in the commented line 4 (1) tC.tagPerf.customPatterns.push({label:’Solution A’,p:’domain\.com.*js\.js’})

  

Example:

tC.tagPerf.customPatterns.push({label:’exelate’,p:’loadm.exelator.com’});

• You can also add additional filters (in addition to default filters page type, container, device, OS and browser). If you wish to add a custom filter, place the following code block in the commented line: tc_vars[“custom_segment”] = #custom_segment#;

Note: You can only add one additional filter.

Example: to add a “page category” filter (tc_vars[“page_cat1”]) :

tc_vars[“custom_segment”] = tc_vars[“page_cat1”];

• Finally, you can change the capturing method of the “Page Type” filter, which is available in the reports. This filter is based on the tc_vars[“env_template”] variable by default. If this variable is not available on your site, you can rely on a different variable by adding the following code block in the commented line (4) tc_vars[“env_template”] = #page_type#;

Example: if you wish to replace tc_vars[“env_template”] with tc_vars[“page_type”] :

tc_vars[“env_template”] = tc_vars[“page_type”] ;

These variables are called external variables because they are outside the Commanders Act web container: They are embedded directly in the source code of your site’s pages, in contrast with internal variables, which are created inside the container and therefore not visible in the page’s source code. External variables are added by your technical teams or the technical provider in charge of implementing Commanders Act web containers on your site.

External variables are indispensable since they contain most of the data sent to the solutions present in the container. Their function and number vary depending on the site’s economic model (for example, media sites will not have the same external variables as e-commerce sites).

The list of external variables must be considered and established before Commanders Act web container is implemented in order to meet the embedded solutions’ medium- to long-term needs. A summary of the external variables to implement on your site will be provided by your Commanders Act consultant during the setup phase of the TMS, in an Excel file named “deliverables” or “tagging plan“.

External variables must be declared in the Commanders Act interface before you begin configuring tags in your containers. See the “Adding external variables” article in this section to find out how to declare an external variable in the interface.

All declared external variables can be used:

– To pass information to the solutions embedded in the container (linking external variables and solutions is called mapping). See the “Mapping Tags’ Variables” article to find out how to map your external variables in a tag.

– To create activation rules for your tags. See the “Adding Rules” section to find out how to create rules based on your external variables.

Additional information

As with your container, external variables must be present on all of your site’s pages and assigned values suited to the context. For example:

– The value of the “page template” variable will be different for the most important page templates on your site: homepage, product page, confirmation page, etc.

– The value of the “user id” variable will change for each visitor that connects to your site.

External variables must be declared in your site’s source code before the call to your containers (=JavaScript files). If you have a header container, the external variables will thus be present in the <head>; if you have a container in the body, they must be declared in the <body> html tag.

Here is a sample list of external variables:

<script type="text/javascript">
var tc_vars = new Array();
tc_vars["env_work"] = 'Prod';
tc_vars["env_channel"] = 'Web';
tc_vars["env_language"] = 'fr';
tc_vars["env_country"] = 'FR';
tc_vars['page_type'] = 'Homepage';
tc_vars["page_name"] = 'Tag Commander Market';
tc_vars["page_category_1"] = '';
tc_vars["page_category_2"] = '';
tc_vars["page_category_3"] = '';
</script>

/* Data layer is setup - call the Web Container Script underneath */

<script type="text/javascript" src="//cdn.tagcommander.com/674/my_web_container.js"></script>

Adding external variables

There are two situations in which you may need to declare your variables in the external variable management interface:

1) You wish to install Commanders Act on a new site: prior to having your technical teams or technical provider implement the data layer/variables in your site’s source code, you need to declare the variables in the Commanders Act interface so they are available for mapping.

2) Information is missing from your current tagging plan (e.g. customer status): Again, this variable must be declared in the interface first, before it can be used in your tags and rules.

Note: If necessary, you can click “Download“, to retrieve your external variables in JavaScript format and send them to your technical team or the technical provider in charge of implementing the variables in you site’s source code:

Clicking “Download” will open a window containing the JavaScript code to insert in the site’s source code:

To add an external variable, you must go to the “Data Management” > "Web Data layer" > “External Variables” and click “ADD VARIABLE”

The “add variable” window contains various fields:

“Name“: the variable’s name (mandatory field).

“Category“: used to categorize the variable according to its application (e.g. variable relative to users, product pages, confirmation pages, etc.) See the “Categorizing External Variables” article in this section.

“Type“: The type of variable. See the “Managing Variable Types” article in this section.

“Use in noscript“: Check the box so that the variable is present in the tag’s noscript code.

“Description“: A description of the variable, to clarify the variable’s name (e.g. “Page template” can be the description of the variable named “env_template”).

“Detailed description“: A detailed description of the variable, to further clarify the variable’s name (e.g. “possible values: homepage/category/product/funnel_confirmation” can be the detailed description of the “env_template” variable).

Once the variable is added, it will appear on the variables list:

Categorizing external variables

Variables can be categorized for easier management.

Categories allow you to classify variables according to their application (e.g. variables relative to site users in the “Users” category, variables for product pages in the “Product page” category, generic cross-functional variables for the site in the “Environment” category, etc.)

Categories are managed by clicking the “manage categories” button to the left of the “ADD VARIABLE” button:

Once your category is created, it can be used in the window to add and edit external variables; you can edit them by clicking the pencil icon, delete them by clicking the cross and adding them by entering a name and clicking the blue "+" button :

Managing variable types

The variable “type” (also called “processing function“) allows you to modify the variable format on the fly when mapping your tags.

They are useful when one of your solutions requires a variable format that is different from the format used in the external variables by the technical teams in charge of implementing the data layer.

For example, if your “page_name” variable contains special characters in the source code, the processing functions allow you to correct them so that your solutions can receive the value without special characters.

The most commonly used types are:

• Order amount: this allows you to modify the number format (amount) on the fly.

You can change separating commas into periods (e.g. “12,50” becomes “12.50”), choose the number of decimal places to retain (e.g. “12.50 becomes “12.5”), or convert the amount into pennies (“12.50 becomes “1250”).

• Alphanumeric & Special chars: this allows you to modify the character string format on the fly.

You can replace special characters with “_” (e.g. “the company&its values” changes to “the company_its values”) or truncate a character string (e.g. limiting the variable’s value to 10 characters).

After assigning a variable type, you can modify its value on the fly, tag by tag, in the “EDIT” interface. Variables with a type added will have a blue symbol in front of their name (1):

Once you have mapped your variable, click the link symbol:

A window will appear with a list of different operations corresponding to the type chosen. Check the box corresponding to the operation you want (for example, remove special characters and replace them by “_”) and click “SAVE” :

Advanced : 2-dimensional array

This type can be assigned to variables having a two-dimensional array as a value. On an ecommerce site, this will deal very often with “list_product” and “order_product” variables that return, respectively, information on products displayed on a category page or added to the cart.

We speak of “two-dimensional arrays” since these variables return an array of values for each product (e.g. for all the products on the site’s page, their ID, name, price, quantity, etc.).

Certain partner solutions may request that you send product data in their tag that are separated by a character called a “separator” (e.g. all product IDs separated by “|“, or all product prices separated by a comma in their confirmation tag).

The operation will be much easier if you select the “Two-dimensional array” processing function for your “order_product” variable.

You will then be able to send your partners the information they expect without requiring any knowledge of JavaScript.

The first step in the configuration process is to select the “Two-dimensional array” type (1) for your variable:

Once this type is added, click on the “List” icon that appears next to your variable to see a summary of the external variables:

Enter all your array keys in the window that appears (e.g. if your main variable is “list_products”, the keys will be characteristics of your products, i.e. the ID, name, price, etc.):

After selecting the “Two-dimensional array” type for your variable go to the “EDIT” step. Click the symbol appearing to the left of the variable that you just mapped:

Enter the array key in the configuration window (e.g. the product ID) and the separator:

You can also use the “Two-dimensional array” type to create internal variables that return product keys separated by the symbol of your choice. For more information, go to the “Adding Custom Internal Variables – Builder Mode” article.

Editing and deleting external variables

You can edit an external variable by clicking the “Edit” icon and delete it by clicking the trash can. The flag next to the variable’s name will tell you if it is mapped and the tag(s) it is mapped with:

Note: The variables used in a container (to be added to a tag, for example) cannot be deleted, and their names cannot be modified.

By clicking on the flag, you will see which container(s), tag(s) or rule(s) use this variable:

In order to be able to visualize TagPerformance reports, you have to request the activation of this module, not included in the basic Commanders Act offer. If you are interested in using TagPerformance, please get in touch with your account manager or our Support Department (support@commandersact.com).

To access the reports,

• Log in to the Commanders Act Interface and click the Health > Website Monitoring > TagPerformance menu

Dashboard

The “Dashboard” report provides an overview of tags’ performance on your site:

You will find below a detailed explanation of the report’s analysis windows.

1)-The three main indicators (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded):

• Average Start Render (First Paint): average loading time on site of the Start Render event.

• Average DOM Ready: average loading time on site of the DOM Ready event.

• Average Page loading time (on load): average loading time on site of the DOM Loaded event.

Note: These three metrics consider the following filters “page type”, “container”, “device”, “OS” or “browser”.

Example: These three pages are loaded on your site:

The three metrics would take the following values:

• “Average Start Render (First Paint)”: 5 sec (700ms, 500ms and 300ms on average)

• “Average DOM Ready”: 8 sec (2000ms, 2200ms and 1100ms on average)

• “Average Page loading time (on load)”: 6 sec (2800ms, 2800ms and 2100ms on average)

2)-The Pie Chart:

The pie chart highlights tags that take longer to load in terms of the selected level of analysis in the available filters: Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded or Cumulated loading time.

Example: the pie chart above appears once the “Tags impacting start render (First Paint)” level of analysis is selected. It shows that the “Lengow lead validation” tag is the tag that delays the most the Start Render event, because it takes about 17% of total time preceding the Start Render event.

By clicking the “Others” part, you will be able to obtain more details about the remaining tags affecting your site’s loading time.

Note: the pie chart that appears next provides the proportion of each tag in relation with the “Other”’s total.

Example: Here below, the “Effiliation” tag takes about 14% of the “Other”’s total loading time (14% of the 21% of global loading time, which “Others” account for).

3)-Main Tag Variations:

The “Main Tag Variations” graphs allow you to identify tags whose loading time has varied (+/-10%) over a selected period of time in terms of the selected level of analysis in the available filters: Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded or Cummulated loading time.

The tag’s variation measures gaps in tags’ loading times in relation with the median (and not the average, in order for it to be less sensitive to extreme values). Calculation is based on the six previous identical periods.

Example:

We wish to analyze the variation of tags affecting the Start Render event on May 22nd.

In the screenshot below, we can see a 65% increase in AB Tasty’s loading time for that day. The tag does indeed take 61.96ms to load, whereas the median for the six previous days was of 37.65ms. (May 16th: 48.05ms /May 17th: 30.30ms / May 18th: 35.77ms / May 19th: 27.44ms / May 20th: 64.11 ms / May 21st: 39.53ms).

4)-Main Page Type Variations:

The “Main Page Type Variations” graphs allow you to identify the page types whose loading time has varied (+/-10%) over a selected period of time in terms of the DOM Loaded event only (the page’s loading time is defined with the arrival of the DOM Loaded event).

Note: The page type corresponds to the default “page type” filter available on the interface.

The page type variation measures gaps in pages’ loading times depending on their type and in relation with the median (and not the average). Calculation is based on the six previous identical periods.

Example:

We wish to analyze variations in types on May 2nd.

In the screenshot below, we see a 31% reduction in loading times for the “newsletter” page type on that day. It takes 5.23ms to load whereas the median in the six preceding days was of 7.6ms (April 26th: 7.58 ms / April 27th: 5.31 ms / April 28th: 8.16 ms /April 29th: 7.62 ms / April 30th: 7.84 ms / May 1st: 6.02 ms).

Report by tag

1)-The four main metrics

• Average page loading time: average loading time of your website’s pages (= DOM Loaded). This loading time is compared to that of the previous period (ex: the previous day or week according to the selected period).

• Average tag loading time: average loading time of the tags on your website according to the level of analysis that you selected in the filtering options (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded, Cumulated loading time). This loading time is compared to that of the previous period (ex: the previous day or week according to the selected period).

• Lowest impact tag: tag that takes the least time to load according to the level of analysis that you selected in the filtering options (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded, Cumulated loading time).

• Highest impact tag: tag that takes the most time to load according to the level of analysis that you selected in the filtering options (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded, Cumulated loading time).

Note: These four metrics consider the selected filters among “page type”, “container”, “device”, “OS” or “browser”.

2)-TagPerformance by tags

The graph shows information about tags’ loading time on your website.

To select tags to analyze with the graph (1), check the corresponding tag in the “Tags” report (2) and reload (3).

You can compare this data to generic information about the page’s context. To do so, select the indicators you are interested in from the dropdown menu above the graph.

Metrics related to the analyzed tags:

• Tag Loading time: tags’ loading time according to the level of analysis that you selected in the filtering options (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded, Cumulated loading time).

• Tag firing: number of times tags are loaded on the site (this metric is independent from the filters).

Metrics related to the page’s context:

• Tag number: number of tags present in the last generated version(s) of a container.

• Average start render (First paint): average loading time of the tart Render on the site.

• Average page structure building (DOM Ready): average loading time of the DOM Ready on the site.

• Average page loading time (OnLoad): average loading time of the DOM Loaded on the site.

Note: These six metrics consider the selected filters among “page type”, “container”, “device”, “OS” or “browser”.

Example:

You wish to know if a tag loading during the Start Render event has an impact on the site’s global Start Render.

• Use the “Tags impacting Start Render (First Paint)” filter on your report:

• Select the tag to analyze:

  
• Select the following metrics from your graph: “Tag Loading Time” (the tag’s loading time) and “Average Start Render (First Paint)” (average loading time of the Start Render):

  

The result below shows that the selected tag has little impact on the site’s Start Render, as the increase in the tag’s loading time at 13h (1) did not cause the Start Render’s average loading time to increase as well at that very moment.

3)-Tags

The “Tags” section of the report provides deeper insight about the tags that are loaded on your site, according to the level of analysis you selected from the filters on the top left-hand side (Start Render, DOM Ready, DOM Loaded, Cumulated loading time) and top right-hand side of the page (“page type”, “container”, “device”, “OS” and “browser”).

You can analyze the following elements for each tag:

• “Tag loading time” (ms): Loading time in milliseconds

• “Tag firing”: Number of times a tag is loaded

  

If you click a tag’s name, a graph appears showing these items:

• The tag’s loading time compared to the previous period (ex: previous day if the analysis is done by day).

• The tags’ average loading time compared to the previous period.

• The number of times a tag is loaded compared to the previous period (ex: previous day if the analysis is done by day).

• The number of times tags are loaded on the site compared to the previous period.

Note: The current period is always displayed in green and the period of comparison in blue.

Piggybacking

“Piggybacking”, consisting in triggering a tag with another, has widespread exponentially with the appearance of programmatic. The subsequent data leakage has generated legal issues and financial losses for companies.

Amid this context, the “Tag Hierarchy” report provides a global insight of requests happening while your website and its content load. You can thus better control calls issued from your website and exchanged data.

Report Structure:

1/Page type filter:

This report is filtered by page type (“page_type” option on the segmentation menu). The default selected page type is the first one appearing on the list (1) and is displayed on the top, left-hand side of the report (2):

You can at all times apply filters on different page types or deselect enabled filters to have an overview of your site (please note that in this case, the report might take a little longer to load, as it will combine all domains called on your website).

2/Request type (script/iframe/pixel)

The report highlights the request’s nature/type:

• Script (URL called with <script> tag)

• Iframe (URL called with an <iframe> tag)

• Pixel (URL called with an <img> tag)

• “Other” (in case the request type is not identified)

3/Request Detail

The “Tag Hierarchy” report allows you to visualize all domains called from your main domain and all other domains they call on different levels:

On the diagram above, sub-domain 2 (“sub-domain 2”) is called from your site’s main domain. It is a JavaScript file (blue circle) that in turn calls two pixels (green circles) and a JavaScript file. Waterfall calls stop here for this request, but this is not the case for sub- domain 1 (“Sub-domain 1”), which calls JavaScript files which in turn issue new requests.

In order to provide you with better readability, same-type “childless” requests (script/iframe/pixel) coming from the same domain are gathered under the same domain name, and a number between brackets next to the domain’s name indicates how many calls were issued from it:

By hovering over any of these domains (ex: ) you will see, with greater detail, which URLs are called by them:

You will also be able to see the URL structure and its parameters for certain requests, hence all the information sent to solutions called on your website:

4/Report dates

Displayed data is collected over the past 24 rolling hours.

This export is currently unavailable.

Filters

1)-Select your level of analysis:

• “Tags impacting start render (First Paint)”: This corresponds to the aggregated loading time of hits that are sent prior to the Start Render event.

• “Tags impacting page structure building (DomReady)”: This corresponds to the aggregated loading time of hits that are sent prior to the DOM Ready event.

• “Tags impacting page loading time (Onload)”: This corresponds to the aggregated loading time of hits that are sent before the DOM Loaded event.

• “Cumulated tag loading time”: corresponds to the aggregated loading time of all hits (including those sent after the DOM Loaded event).

Example: The following diagram shows an extract of tags present on the site:

These are the results you will obtain when you select the following levels of analysis:

• “Tags impacting start render (First Paint)”: TAG1 (HIT1) + TAG2 (HIT1)

  
• “Tags impacting page structure building (DomReady)”: TAG1 (HIT1) + TAG2 (HIT1) + TAG1 (HIT2) + TAG1 (HIT3)

  
• “Tags impacting page loading time (Onload)”: TAG1 (HIT1) + TAG2 (HIT1) + TAG1 (HIT2) + TAG1 (HIT3) + TAG2 (HIT2)

  
• “Cumulated tag loading time”: TAG1 (HIT1) + TAG2 (HIT1) + TAG1 (HIT2) + TAG1 (HIT3) + TAG2 (HIT2) + TAG1 (HIT4)

  

If you wish to know more about the “Start Render”, “DOM Ready” and “DOM Loaded” concepts please refer to the Definition of TagPerformance Metrics article.

If you wish to know more about the technical elements that are captured by TagPerformance, please refer to the Advanced: Technical functioning of TagPerformance article.

2)-Select, if need be, one of the default filters from the interface should you require a more detailed analysis of your site’s performance.

• The page type: This filter allows you to display your tags’ performance in terms of the page template. It is based on the “env_template” variable’s values, which are automatically captured by TagPerformance.

Note: If you do not have an env_template variable on your site, you still can capture the values of other variables. Please refer to the Adding the TagPerformance Tag article.

• The container name: This filter allows you to display how tags within one or more specific containers are performing.

• The device: This filter allows you to display your tags’ performance in terms of the devices your visitors are using. The “device” metric is calculated automatically by our servers, based on the user agent.

• OS: This filter allows you to display your tags’ performance in terms of the devices your visitors are using. The “OS” metric is calculated automatically by our servers based on the user agent.

• The Bowser: This filter allows you to display your tags’ performance in terms of the browsers your visitors are using. The “browser” metric is calculated automatically by our servers based on the user agent.

Note: if you wish to add an additional filter, please refer to the Adding the TagPerformance Tag article.

3)-Click “Apply” to obtain filtered results and a different level of analysis.

Onsite performance of a website is one of the most important KPIs for SEO. Therefore more and more businesses are interested in optimizing onsite performance via TagCommander. This post collects topics to make TagCommander itself more performant.

Reduce File Size of TagCommander

Remove unused Data Layer Properties

Each Data Layer property that is configured in the options in the interface creates a bit of JavaScript code in the Container to initialise the variable in case it was not present in the onsite Data Layer tc_vars. Removing unused/old variables will therefore make the Container file a bit smaller (and as a side effect also improve transparency of the Container setup).

Remove Unused Internal Variables

Each internal variable that is configured in the options in the interface is a JavaScript snippet, so removing internal variables allows to make a Container file smaller. This can be done by removing unused internal variables and also by specifying which variables are used in which Container. This is especially important for clients with a <head> and <body> Container and clients that have multiple Containers for different websites.

Do Not Repeat Yourself

Sometimes the same functionality of a Tag is duplicated in multiple Tags. In these cases it is possible to save a good amount of JavaScript code and Container file size by refactoring the common functionality into an internal variable or into a common Tag. For example many Tags exist of two parts. One part loads an external JavaScript library of the vendor and one part sends the actual event to the vendor. Per default the code that loads the JavaScript library is often duplicated in every event. So extracting the first part into a base Tag allows to remove the duplicated JavaScript.

Split Large Container Files

Many Tags are deployed on every page of a website even so they are not triggered. For example many vendors have separate Tags for collecting information and only one Tag that is played out on the confirmation page. Therefore it might make sense to split the Container in two parts—one for catalogue pages and one for funnel pages. Therefore both Containers have a smaller size as they only include Tags that are relevant for their part of the website.

Also make sure to only implement Tags in <head> Container if necessary as those Tags usually have a greater impact on onpage performance than Tags in `<body>` Container.

Implement Hybrid TagCommander Setup

A hybrid setup allows to move onsite performance impact into the Server-Side TagCommander infrastructure.

Make TagCommander asynchronous

Load Container Asynchronous

Many onsite page speed crawlers measure the time until the browser event onload. So in case the IT team loads the TagCommander Container asynchronous on the onload event it is possible to make the TagCommander file invisible for some page speed metrics. This is usually only possible for <body> Containers as <head> Containers need to be executed synchronously for A/B testing and personalisation Tags that have an impact on the visual content of the website.

Load Tags Asynchronous

JavaScript is for the most part a single thread language, this means that long running JavaScript (like a long process in a loop) can block other parts of the JavaScript that should be executed right away. It is possible to put long running JavaScript on an execute later with a lower priority stack by wrapping it inside of a setTimeout with a delay of 0 ms.

This needs to be tested with each individual Tag as some might not be compatible with this approach.

Commanders Act Events Triggers are onsite events that are used by Commanders Act users to dynamically execute Tags.

Definitions

Installation

Commanders Act allows to set up common Trigger automatically without the involvement of technical team (e.g. Container loaded, DOM ready or Vertical Scroll 25%). In cases where the default Triggers are not sufficient it is possible for technical personnel to implement custom Triggers. The necessary Trigger are defined during the Commanders Act setup process, but you can find a list of native Trigger on this page.

To install a custom Trigger on the website it is necessary to call a JavaScript function with the following pattern:

tC.event.{{ Trigger Label }}(this, {{ Trigger Data Layer }});

A typical example is an Add to basket event where the product id of the selected product is sent with the event:

tC.event.add_to_basket(this, { product_id: "12345" });

if (tC && tC.event && typeof tC.event.add_to_basket === "function") {
    tC.event.add_to_basket(this, { product_id: "12345" });
}

Testing

Via Quality Assurance Tag

The Tag template Commanders Act - Event QA in the Commanders Act Tag library automatically outputs event Data Layer information to the JavaScript console when executed. Assigning this Tag with the Trigger allows to log a snapshot of the Data Layer when the respective Trigger is executed. Another way, more technical: you can type in your console tc_arrray_events when the event is executed. The Data Layer of the event variables will be displayed.

I cannot see my console.log, why ?

When you write a console.log within a tag to check if a tag is correctly triggered of to check a value, for example like this :

When a new container version is generated, it re-writes the console.log as tC.log

To be able to read these tC.log you need to add this cookie within you browser :

Commanders Act offers dedicated Plug-Ins for all major Single Page Application (SPA) frameworks. Please refer to the Plug-In for detailed installation instructions for VueJS.

1. What is an SPA environment?

An SPA (Single Page Application) is a website or a web application that loads elements dynamically according to user actions rather than loading new pages after every interaction. Commanders Act web container offers functions allowing you to load all or a part of the container within an SPA environment, allowing you to call desired tags on every action performed by a user. These functions need to be implemented in your site’s source code by either your technical partner or by your own technical staff.

2.How to implement Commanders Act web container in an SPA environment?

2.1 Loading containers

Commanders Act web containers are loaded once upon page load within a Single Page Application Environment. In order to reload containers on user actions, you can use the following features:

• tC.container.reload() : this function allows you to reload all the containers on a page. Elements shared by containers (deduplication calculation, external variables initialization, internal variables calculation, calculation of cookies dropped with data storage and the initialization of the Privacy cookie) are only loaded once to optimize performance.

This function allows to reload all of a page’s containers while excluding some of their elements. Elements to exclude need to be mentioned in the “exclusions” table. Ex: if you wish to reload the container without recalculating internal variables, you need to call this function: tC.container.reload({exclusions:["internalvars"]}) This function also allows to call the tC.event function that loads selected tags upon user action. The tC.event function is executed after the container elements reloading. label: specify the name you wish to call your function (ex : "click", "add_to_cart"…). targeted_element: DOM elements on which the event applies. {} if not necessary. event_variables: variables specific to the event. {} if not necessary.Ex:

tC.container.reload({events: {label1: [{target: document.getElementById('targeted_element'}, {"page_name":"", "product_id":""}]}})

• tC.container_IDS_IDC.reload() : this function allows loading a single container (to do so, you will have to specify the site’s and the container’s ID) on a page that contains more than one.

IDS : Commanders Act site ID IDC : Commanders Act container ID

• tC.container_IDS_IDC.reload({ exclusions: ["datastorage","deduplication","internalvars","privacy"], events: {label1: [{targeted_element},{event_variables}], label2: [{},{}]} })

This function allows loading a single container (to do so, you will have to specify the site’s and the container’s ID) on a page that contains more than one while excluding some of their elements. Elements to exclude need to be mentioned in the “exclusions” table, and event functions need to be mentioned in the “events” object, as for the tC.container.reload({exclusions:["datastorage","deduplication","internalvars","privacy"]}) function.

2.2 Loading tags

To load selected tags upon user action, you will need to implement this function:

• tC.event.label() : this function allows loading selected tags upon user action.

label: specify the name you wish to call your function. Ex: implement the tC.event.step2_basket function if your wish to call specific tags on the 2nd step in the purchase cart. You can also set-up a “generic” function like tC.event.all on all of your virtual pages to call tags on all of your SPA sites (Analytics tags, for instance). You will then use perimeters and constraints from the Commanders Act interface to control other tags’ execution.

• tC.event.label(this, {"page_name":"", "product_id":""}) : this function allows loading selected tags based on user action and to define variables specific to said action (ex : the name of a virtual page, a specific product id …).

2.3 Going further: Structure of a Commanders Act web Ccontainer

You will find below a list of all the elements that load inside the Commanders Act web container upon first load, as well as the tC.container.reload,(tC.container_IDS_IDC.reload()) and tC.event.XXX() functions that are called.

A Container Strategy is the layout of the Web Container of a site. Following you will find recommended Container Strategies for common types of websites and businesses.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce websites require a mix of personalization, analytics and conversion Tags. To optimise website performance it is recommended to use three Containers.

With this setup it is possible to avoid conversion Tag JavaScript snippets on catalog pages—this results in smaller Container file sizes and therefore quicker loading times for SEO relevant catalog pages.

Publisher

Publisher websites primarily require analytics Tags. Therefore it is recommended to only use one Container.

Using one <body> Container helps to have minimal impact on the page loading time, which is crucial for SEO of Content pages like news articles.

In case A/B-testing and personalization Tags are used, the additional implementation of a <head> Container is recommended.

“tC.” methods are namespaced* . They come in handy when needing to perform technically advanced actions such as printing the array of launched tags within a container into the browser’s console. Please note that these functions’ availability and behavior depend on several elements like your container configuration, among others. Simply type “tC.” into your browser’s console and the list of available functions on a given site and for a given container will appear.

* “namespacing is a technique employed to avoid collisions with other objects or variables in the global namespace. They’re also extremely useful for helping organize blocks of functionality in your application into easily manageable groups that can be uniquely identified.”

GET Tags List

Returns the tags list

Call URL

GET api.commander1.com/api/1.0/manage/container/tags/list?id_site=X&access_token=Y&id_container=Z

Call parameters

Return code:

Response format :

The response is in JSON format.

GET

Response example

Get Users

Get platform users.

Users

GET https://api.commander1.com/v2/{siteId}/users

Two usages : GET /users/ : Returns a list of user properties (depending on the parameters requested) linked to the users of a site. GET /users/123 : Return properties of one user (id 123) on one site. Click below to download complete API documentation

Query Parameters

Following you will find common Commanders Act Trigger setups.

Page View Trigger

In most cases page view events are covered by the inbuilt Container loaded and DOM ready Trigger within Commanders Act. Therefore it is only necessary to setup the Data Layer and the Container to execute Tags on page views. In case of JavaScript driven webpages it is sometimes necessary to further track "virtual page views", e.g. in case the process steps of a sales funnel (log-in, enter shipping details, enter payment details, confirm order, order success) are implemented via JavaScript functionally and not via individual pages with distinct URLs.

In this case it is common to track the initial page view with the Container loaded or DOM ready Trigger and subsequent virtual page views via a custom Trigger. For this scenario it would be necessary to follow these steps on each subsequent virtual page view.

1. Update tc_vars Data Layer

The Data Layer should be updated with the new metadata of the subsequent virtual page view.

2. Reload the Container

Some internal functionality of the Container (e.g. Internal Variables) are only calculated when the Container was initially loaded. To reload these with the updated Data Layer it is necessary to reload the Container via a JavaScript function.

3. Execute Triggers

After these steps it is then necessary to signal a custom Trigger to execute the related Tags.

To use event attributes, you can specify the event or the element as first argument.

Old Method

To use event attributes, you need to specify the event or the element as argument. event is a special variable that is always available inside of onclick and on* attributes.

Click Trigger

Click Trigger implementation depends on the scenario. e.g. Is the user navigated to another site when he clicks an element? and Does the following page open in a new tab?.

Following you will find a list of common scenarios for click Trigger.

Scenarios

Click Navigates to an Internal Page

Links or interactions that navigate the user to another internal page are difficult to track. The reason for this is that Tags usually need more time to execute than the browser needs to navigate to the next page. This might accidentally cancel Tags execution and therefore its related tracking capabilities.

To successfully track these kind of scenarios it is important to align with the Tag vendor for a solutions. Typical solutions are:

• The Tag delays page navigation until the Tag finishes execution

• The Tag uses the Beacon Browser API, which sends tracking calls in the background

These options typically require configuration of the event Tag code.

Click Navigates to an External Page

External links are best opened in another browser tab by using the target="_blank" option on anchor links. This allows Tags to finish their work on the old tab, while users can already navigate the new external page in a new tab.

In case external links can not be opened in a new tab this scenario should follow the same advice than the prior scenario.

Click Does Not Navigate to Another Page

Some click events do not redirect to a new page. Typical examples are video transport controls or interactions with image carousels.

These click events can usually be tracked with less rissk due to Tags having enough time to execute on the same page.

Setup

With Commanders Act Interface

Commanders Act users can setup common click Triggers with minimal effort via the Web Containers interface by selecting them with a CSS selector path.

This Trigger works in many scenarios but has two downsides:

1. Using a generic CSS selector path to setup a Trigger is unstable and can break on future releases of the website code when the CSS is updated.

2. Commanders Act can only identify elements that are loaded synchronously on the website. Elements that are loaded asynchronously cannot be watched by the predefined Commanders Act Trigger.

Good scenarios for setting up Commanders ActTriggers with the Interface are:

1. Onsite campaign that has to be measured for a short time period (couple of weeks)

2. General click tracking until the web development team can implement a custom Trigger.

With Custom Trigger

Technical personnel can implement custom Triggers to track clicks on a website. This approach is more stable compared to setting up a click Trigger with the interface, but usually requires some time until the web development team can implement them. Therefore it is recommended to implement intermediary Triggers with the interface until they are implemented in the site.

Custom Triggers should not be implemented for short term campaigns, but should be favoured for business critical functionalities like Add to basket or Successful Registration.

A common way to setup click Trigger is done by setting up data-attributes on all elements where clicks should be tracked. These attributes could then be filled by the website CMS with values, so e.g. the marketing team can setup a "Click Trigger" for a new Teaser on their own. In HTML this might look like this:

Inside of Commanders Act Platform it is then possible to catch clicks on these elements to execute a custom Trigger. With jQuery this might look like this:

A web container is a JavaScript file which has two purposes:

· To be able to use native functions & methods of the TMS

· To execute the partners solutions (tags) contained inside

It is possible, as it is often the case, to have several containers for the same site or even the same page.

The URL of each JavaScript Web Container file will be provided alongside the Container IDs and Container Names by a Commanders Act Consultant during the setup process.

Implementation of the containers on the page

Web container are usually installed by implementing a <script> html node on every page of your website that holds a src attribute that points to the Container URL.

The containers can be placed in different locations in the page source’s code depending on their use and your type of business.

Here’s a common example with 3 containers:

<head> container's location is usually used for AB test and should be load synchronously, to prevent flickering effect.

We recommended to implement all <body> containers asynchronously. Simply use the async attribute in the <script> element.

Installation of <head> Container

<head> Container are used to implement A/B-testing and personalisation Tags that usually impact the visual content of a website before it is presented to the user. Therefore it is important to place them as high as possible in the <head> section of your website.

Please ensure that the <head> Container file is loaded synchronously to avoid potential content flickering effects.

Installation of <body> Container

<body> Container are used to implement Tags that measure information. These Containers are therefore placed at the end of the <body> section to make sure they have minimal impact on the loading time of the content of the website.

In contrast to the <head> Container it is possible to implement <body> Container asynchronously. For example it is possible to load them via JavaScript on the onload event of the page or it is possible to use the async attribute in the <script> element.

Testing

Via Browser Console

It is possible to log all loaded Container files on a site via the JavaScript console of the browser. The JavaScript object tC.containersLaunched provides information of each loaded Web Container.

Following you will find an example object including its most relevant information:

Definitions

Getting Started

The onsite API is used to interact with Commanders Act features with JavaScript.

How to use

The onsite API consists of a single function, cact(), with the following strict signature:

Onsite API is included in each containers and privacy banners.

Send event

To send event data to the serverside Commanders Act platform, use this command:

Example : to send a purchase event :

Get information

To get various values from Commanders Act, use this command:

Example : to get consent from TrustCommander, you can call the consent.get API like this:

Error handling

You can handle errors through error property in the callback object. Example:

API Stub (optional)

For advance usage, we provide also an API stub that can be added when you need to interact with the API before containers or banners have loaded. This stub is already included in containers and privacy banners, so you do not have to add in most use cases. The stub is used to buffer all methods in a JavaScript array until Commanders Act JavaScript is loaded and ready to process the methods. This allows for example to use the onsite API before TrustCommander JavaScript was loaded.

window.caReady is a JavaScript array that buffers the interactions with the API. window.cact is a JavaScript function used to interact with the onsite API.

Commanders Act TMS offers dedicated Plug-Ins for all major Single Page Application (SPA) frameworks. Please refer to the Plug-In for detailed installation instructions for Angular.

Commanders Act TMS offers dedicated Plug-Ins for all major Single Page Application (SPA) frameworks. Please refer to the Plug-In for detailed installation instructions for AngularJS.

A Commanders Act Data Layer is a JavaScript object that holds metadata of a website as properties to make it available to Tags. In the platform this Data Layer is named "External Variables" to distinguish it from scripted "Internal Variables" that are generated within the Container JavaScript.

Installation

To install a Commanders Act Data Layer it is necessary to implement a global JavaScript object tc_vars that holds the meta data of the page as direct properties. The required Data Layer properties are defined during the Commanders Act setup process, but you can find a list of common properties on .

The approach to fill the Data Layer with properties depends on the technology framework that is used on the website and can reach from JavaScript web scraping to templating to hardcoding.

The Data Layer needs to be filled with information before the Web Container file is loaded—otherwise information might not be available at the time the Container JavaScript executes.

In case multiple Containers are used on the same page it is possible to fill the Data Layer in multiple steps. Global information like the page type should be made available before the first Container is loaded. Information that is only relevant for a certain Container (e.g. product information) can be appended prior to the respective Container.

Following example outlines how a Data Layer can be installed in case both a <head> and a <body> Container are used on a website.

Testing

Via JavaScript Console

It is possible to investigate the Data Layer in the JavaScript console by logging tc_vars.

Following you will find an example output of a tc_vars Data Layer in the JavaScript Console.

Via Quality Assurance Tag

The Tag template Commanders Act - Data Layer QA in the Commanders Act Tag library automatically outputs Data Layer information to the JavaScript console on each page. This approach has the advantage that it logs a snapshot of the Data Layer at the exact time the Container JavaScript was executed. This allows to identify race conditions between the Data Layer properties and the Container JavaScript to make sure all necessary properties are available in time.