Campaign element template parameters

Format of campaign element template parameters

The format of an campaign element template parameter depends on where the data is coming from. There are two options:

1. Data is coming from the user interface.
   If the data the task command needs is data that a business user entered when setting up the trigger, target or action, then the format looks like this:

   <Argument name="paramName" value="MARKETING_paramName" />

   All parameter values that come from the user interface start with this prefix: MARKETING_. Here is an example; in this case, it is for a target that evaluates the support level that a customer has paid for as Gold, Silver or Bronze.

   <Argument name="supportLevel" value="MARKETING_supportLevel" />

   When a business user inputs data about a trigger, target or action used in a marketing activity, the name-value pairs for each campaign element template parameter are saved to the DMELEMENTNVP table. Here is an example of a row in the table for a target with the DMELEMENT_ID of 1000:

   Sample DMELEMENTNVP table content

   DMELEMENT_ID	NAME	VALUE
   1000	"supportLevel"	"Gold"

   When the marketing activity is activated:

   • The marketing services look up the paramName in the DMELEMENTNVP table, and replace the value MARKETING_paramName in the implementation definition with the corresponding value.
   • If the paramName is not found in the DMELEMENTNVP table, then value will be set to any empty string, and that parameter will be ignored.
2. Data is specified directly in the template definition.

   For certain triggers, targets and actions, the task command needs data that a business user does not enter. In this case, the parameter value does not have the prefix MARKETING_.

   For example, if a task command must check the user's behavior on the current page, then the following parameter can pass the current page data to the task command:

   <Argument name="matchLocations" value="request" />

Parameters for lists captured in grid objects

For some campaign elements, business users can specify lists of things like categories, or catalog entries, or customer segments. For example, a business user can specify more than one category for the Recommend Category action. In the properties view of the campaign element, the lists are captured using a grid object. When the list is persisted in the DMELEMENTNVP table, each row in the grid corresponds to one row in the DMELEMENTNVP table, and each row refers to the same property name. For example:

When this type of parameter is included in a campaign element template definition, the parameter needs to specify only one element. For example, the parameter for the previous example looks like this:

<Argument name="categoryIdList" value="MARKETING_categoryIdList"/>

To get the list from the user interface, the corresponding campaign element task command must call the method getElementParameters. The method returns a comma separated list of all the values from the DMELEMENTNVP table. For the previous example, the code getElementParameters().get("categoryIdList") returns 10101,10102,10103. To provide the values in a List object, use the method MarketingUtil.parseList. For the previous example, the line of code looks like this:

List categoryIdList = MarketingUtil.parseList(getElementParameters().get("categoryIdList"));

Common parameters used in campaign elements

The triggers, targets and actions shipped with the Management Center have many parameters defined. If you are creating a new trigger, target or action, you can use the parameters defined here to send user interface data to the task command, or you can create your own.