Reviewing settings in the marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml) for Management Center

Certain Management Center marketing functions are controlled by properties in the wc-admin-component.xml file for the marketing component. For example, there are properties for the session length for marketing experiments and for the time of day that certain marketing triggers are processed. Changing these properties is not always required, but it is a good idea to review certain property settings in this file to ensure that your site requirements are met.

Before you begin

Review Marketing component configuration files (wc-admin-component.xml) to understand the types of properties this file contains.

Procedure

  1. Open the wc-admin-component.xml file in an editor:
    • WebSphere Commerce Developerworkspace_dir\WC\xml\config\com.ibm.commerce.marketing\wc-admin-component.xml
    • WC_installdir\xml\config\com.ibm.commerce.marketing\wc-admin-component.xml
  2. Review the properties in the file to ensure that the settings meet your site requirements.
    In particular, review the following properties:
    Property Why you might want to change it
    dailyScheduledJobTimeForTriggers This property controls the time of day that the SendMarketingTriggers job processes Dialog activity triggers that get handled once a day, for example, the Customer Is In Segment trigger, the Customer Abandons Cart trigger, and the Customer Celebrates Birthday trigger. The default time is 2:00 AM. each day. If this time is not appropriate, for example, it is not an off-peak time for your site, then specify a different time of day in a custom version of the wc-admin-component.xml file for marketing.

    This property also controls the time of day that top-browsed and best-seller lists are generated. These lists display in Web activities that use either the Display Top Browsed or Display Best Sellers actions.
    sessionLength This property controls the default length of a session for marketing experiments (A/B testing). The default length is 3600 seconds (60 minutes). You can specify a different session length in a custom version of the wc-admin-component.xml file for marketing. In the Marketing tool, business users can override the default by specifying a different session length when you set up the experiment.
    Properties in the BEHAVIOR RULE - PROCESS COMMAND ON EXIT section In marketing activities, certain triggers and targets detect the successful exit of a controller command. For instance, the Customer Registers trigger detects the successful exit of the UserRegistrationAddCmd command to determine when a customer registered. If your store uses controller commands that are different from the default WebSphere Commerce commands, then you must specify those custom commands in the BEHAVIOR RULE - PROCESS COMMAND ON EXIT section in a custom version of the wc-admin-component.xml file for marketing.
    Properties in the BEHAVIOR RULE - URL COMMAND section In marketing activities, the function of certain targets and actions relies on matching page view names.

    The Current Page target is a good example. To determine when a customer is viewing the catalog entries or categories that are specified for the target, the server uses either the categoryId value on the CategoryDisplay URL or the productId value on the ProductDisplay URL. The Online Behavior target, Catalog Browsing Behavior target, and the Display Recently Viewed action also use similar URL command matching.

    If your store uses page view names that are different from the default WebSphere Commerce names, then you must override the default command names to match by adding entries in the BEHAVIOR RULE - URL COMMAND section in a custom version of the wc-admin-component.xml file for marketing. See the examples in the wc-admin-component.xml file itself.
  3. If you must change any properties, create a custom version of the wc-admin-component.xml file for marketing and add the changed properties to the file. For instructions, see Changing properties in the marketing component configuration file (wc-admin-component.xml).