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User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
Integrating
Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
Analytics for IBM WebSphere Commerce
WebSphere Commerce provides a framework that you can configure to integrate your store with an external Web analytics solution. This framework includes a tag library that you can use in store page JSP files to provide appropriate analytics information to the external analytics system.
Analytics tag library for IBM WebSphere Commerce
The basis for the WebSphere Commerce analytics framework is a JSP-based tag library. By adding WebSphere Commerce analytics tags to your store pages, you can communicate information about site usage to an external analytics system.
Generic tag
The generic tag is available for use as a pass-through tag to communicate additional information about site usage to an external analytics system. This tag can be used for customization, or to forward information to the vendor tags that are not currently supported in the tag library the vendor provides to support web analytics for WebSphere Commerce.
Using the generic tag with IBM Digital Analytics
If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can use the default implementation of the <cm:generic /> tag that WebSphere Commerce provides; however, this tag does not currently map to any IBM Digital Analytics data tags. The generic tag can be used for customization, or to forward information to IBM Digital Analytics that the existing IBM Digital Analytics data tags do not support.

User Guide
The information contained in this section applies to WebSphere Commerce Version 8. The documentation also applies to all subsequent releases and modifications until otherwise indicated in a newer section.WebSphere Commerce is a single, unified e-commerce platform that offers the ability to do business directly with consumers (B2C), directly with businesses (B2B), and indirectly through channel partners (indirect business models). WebSphere Commerce is designed to be a customizable, scalable, and high availability solution that is built to leverage open standards. It provides easy-to-use tools for business users to centrally manage a cross-channel strategy. Business users can create and manage precision marketing campaigns, promotions, catalog, and merchandising across all sales channels.
- Planning
  Creating a custom implementation of a WebSphere Commerce store requires a significant amount of planning. From gathering client needs, to deploying the live solution, much work is needed to successfully deploy a custom client store. Use the resources in here to help you plan every phase of store creation.
- Installing
  Review the following sections for information about installing the WebSphere Commerce product, associated maintenance, and WebSphere Commerce enhancements.
- Migrating
  Before you migrate to WebSphere Commerce Version 8.0, review this information to help plan and execute your migration.
- Deploying
  The topics in this section describe how to publish stores to either a test or production environment, and how to deploy customized code.
- Operating
- Integrating
  Topics in the Integrating category highlight the tasks that are commonly performed for using WebSphere Commerce in combination with other products.
  - Integrating with back-end systems and external applications
    External systems integration is a key feature of the WebSphere Commerce solution. In WebSphere Commerce business logic is enabled for integration and built-in adapters and interfaces are provided for common integration points. Additionally, the WebSphere Commerce integration solution leverages integration standards by using various IBM connectivity solutions.
  - IBM Watson Campaign Automation integration
    You can integrate IBM Watson Campaign Automation with WebSphere Commerce so that transactional emails are sent by IBM Watson Campaign Automation.
  - Sterling Order Management integration
    The integration between WebSphere Commerce and Sterling Order Management combines the industry-leading front-end capabilities of WebSphere Commerce with the proven, back-end order and inventory management features of Sterling Order Management.
  - IBM MQ
    WebSphere Commerce provides a listener for IBM MQ for inbound requests, and an adapter for IBM MQ for outbound requests, to integrate back-end, and external systems with WebSphere Commerce.
  - Content management integration
    You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with an external content management system through a punch-out window from Management Center and through the web feed utility. You can integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Web Content Manager to provide Management Center users the ability to associate IBM Web Content Manager content with WebSphere Commerce objects.
  - Mobile applications that use IBM Worklight
    IBM Worklight is a mobile application platform that you can use to develop cross-platform hybrid applications for the Aurora starter store.
  - Facebook integration
    Facebook integration relies on several Facebook plugins to add the Connect to Facebook, Like, and Send buttons to the Aurora starter store.
  - Analytics for IBM WebSphere Commerce
    WebSphere Commerce provides a framework that you can configure to integrate your store with an external Web analytics solution. This framework includes a tag library that you can use in store page JSP files to provide appropriate analytics information to the external analytics system.
    - Analytics tag library for IBM WebSphere Commerce
      The basis for the WebSphere Commerce analytics framework is a JSP-based tag library. By adding WebSphere Commerce analytics tags to your store pages, you can communicate information about site usage to an external analytics system.
      - Page view tag
        The WebSphere Commerce page view tag collects information about store pages that a customer viewed.
      - Order tag
        The WebSphere Commerce order tag collects information about a customer's order. The order tag creates two data sets: one for the shopping cart contents at the time of the order and the other for the order summary information.
      - Shopping cart tag
        The WebSphere Commerce shopping cart tag collects details about the items a customer has in the shopping cart.
      - Product tag
        The WebSphere Commerce product tag collects details about the products a customer has viewed.
      - Registration tag
        The WebSphere Commerce registration tag collects registration data for a customer that is logged in to the store.
      - Campaign tag
        The WebSphere Commerce campaign tag tracks impressions and clickthrough for web and email marketing campaign activities that use e-Marketing Spots.
      - Conversion event tag
        The WebSphere Commerce conversion event tag collects information about events that are not directly related to product purchases. These events might include using a store locator, using a product comparison tool, adding items to a wish list, signing up for a gift registry, downloading documents, visiting the contact us page, and more.
      - Element tag
        The WebSphere Commerce element tag tracks customer interactions with content within a page, or intrapage elements. In WebSphere Commerce starter stores, these elements include the product fast finder, and the faceted navigation on category and search result pages. Other examples of elements include search and news portlets, video plays, and Ajax detail hovers for products or customer reviews.
      - Generic tag
        The generic tag is available for use as a pass-through tag to communicate additional information about site usage to an external analytics system. This tag can be used for customization, or to forward information to the vendor tags that are not currently supported in the tag library the vendor provides to support web analytics for WebSphere Commerce.
        Using the generic tag with IBM Digital Analytics
        If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can use the default implementation of the <cm:generic /> tag that WebSphere Commerce provides; however, this tag does not currently map to any IBM Digital Analytics data tags. The generic tag can be used for customization, or to forward information to IBM Digital Analytics that the existing IBM Digital Analytics data tags do not support.
      - Passing extra data to IBM Digital Analytics with the extraparms parameter
        You might want to pass more data to IBM Digital Analytics that is not collected automatically by the WebSphere Commerce analytics tags. For example, you might want to pass information about the brand of the products customers view for a IBM Digital Analytics explore report, or pass specific registration data for a custom report in IBM Digital Analytics. If so, use the extraparms parameter in the WebSphere Commerce analytics tag when you place the tag in your store page.
      - Syntax for passing JavaScript variables as extra parameters
        You can pass a JavaScript variable as an extra parameter to any of the tags for IBM Digital Analytics.
      - Comparison of extra parameters for IBM Digital Analytics tags
        The WebSphere Commerce order tag (<cm:order />) and shopping cart tag (<cm:cart />) support multiple parameters that you can use to pass additional data to IBM Digital Analytics. Those parameters are extraparms, extraparmsMap, and orderExtraparms (orderExtraparms is applicable only to the order tag). It is important to understand which parameter to choose so that you get the results that you expect in the generated IBM Digital Analytics data tags.
    - Integrating a store with IBM Digital Analytics for WebSphere Commerce
      WebSphere Commerce provides a framework and tools to simplify the process of setting up your site to use IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as Coremetrics Analytics. IBM Digital Analytics is an industry leading hosted web analytics solution. The framework is implemented as a tag library designed to act as an intermediary layer between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Digital Analytics. The tools include an auto tagging utility to place analytics tags in your store pages. The tools also include a utility to generate a file that contains your catalog hierarchy for IBM Digital Analytics. This solution can significantly reduce the time that is required to deploy web analytics
    - Integrating a store with an external analytics system (other than IBM Digital Analytics)
      To meet your analytics requirements, you can integrate a WebSphere Commerce store with any web-based analytics system that uses a JavaScript based tagging mechanism. For this purpose, WebSphere Commerce provides an extensible JSP-based tag library framework for analytics.
    - Integrating a store with multiple analytics providers
      WebSphere Commerce provides you with the option to use multiple analytics providers for one store, allowing for greater data collection and accuracy of shopper activity. As a result, you can compare and analyze multiple sets of data from different analytics providers.
  - IBM Product Recommendations and WebSphere Commerce
    IBM Product Recommendations is an IBM Digital Analytics solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can display recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations on your store pages.
  - IBM Marketing Center integration
    You can integrate Management Center with IBM Marketing Center, a cloud-based, all-in-one solution that combines customer analytics with real-time marketing. To integrate with IBM Marketing Center, you must configure the WebSphere Commerce biConfig.xml file to enable the integration. You can also configure single-sign on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center.
  - IBM Digital Data Exchange integration
    To simplify the process of collecting and sending customer shopping behavior data to analytics providers, integrate WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX). IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX) is offered as part of the IBM Digital Analytics solution.
  - Administering IBM Enterprise Marketing Management
    If your site is integrated with IBM Enterprise Marketing Management applications, such IBM Digital Analytics, IBM Product Recommendations, or IBM Marketing Center, you can administer the application features that your site uses. For example, you can administer IBM Digital Analytics based customer segments and import recommendations for IBM Product Recommendations.
  - IBM Dynamic Pricing
    Dynamic Pricing 16.4 is a cloud-based pricing system that analyzes real-time market data to provide suggestions on how merchandisers can react to competitor pricing and shifts in market conditions. Data can be fed to Dynamic Pricing from multiple sources, including WebSphere Commerce. You can configure WebSphere Commerce to export pricing data to Dynamic Pricing for pricing analysis and adjustment. The adjusted pricing data can then be imported from Dynamic Pricing to WebSphere Commerce, so the prices can be propagated to your live store front.
  - Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) integration
    You can integrate Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX) with WebSphere Commerce so that you can import and export WebSphere Commerce customer segments as UBX audiences between third-party applications.
  - Watson Content Hub integration
    You can integrate Watson Content Hub with WebSphere Commerce, so that you can manage content in Watson Content Hub and then use the content in the Management Center Catalogs tool.
  - Integrating IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS with WebSphere Commerce for pricing
    IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules BRMS is a business rule management system that allows developers to easily build and deploy rule-based applications that automate fine-grained, variable decisions used by business systems. You can use WebSphere ILOG JRules to build pricing rulesets, and then reference those rulesets from WebSphere Commerce price rules you create in Management Center.
- Administering
- Tutorials
  WebSphere Commerce provides many tutorials to help you customize and understand your WebSphere Commerce instance and stores.
- Samples
- Developing
  The topics in the Developing section describe tasks performed by an application developer.
- Compliance
  The following section describes how you can leverage WebSphere Commerce features and functionality to help your site be compliant with different privacy and security standards.
- Securing
  These topics describe the security features of WebSphere Commerce and how to configure these features.
- Performance
- Troubleshooting

Using the generic tag with IBM Digital Analytics

If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you can use the default implementation of the <cm:generic /> tag that WebSphere Commerce provides; however, this tag does not currently map to any IBM Digital Analytics data tags. The generic tag can be used for customization, or to forward information to IBM Digital Analytics that the existing IBM Digital Analytics data tags do not support.

Tag placement in store pages

Include the <cm:generic /> tag in the store page. In the page, place the <cm:generic /> tag before the <cm:pageview /> tag.

To use the <cm:generic /> tag, you must also include the tag library in the JSP page before the main page content. Use the following code to include the tag library:


<%@ taglib uri="http://commerce.ibm.com/coremetrics" prefix="cm" %>

Examples of tag usage

Include the generic tag in your store page with the following code:

<cm:generic tag="cmCustomTag(\"param1\", \"param2\");" />