Configuring Management Center to work with IBM Marketing Center

You can configure Management Center and your site to work with IBM Marketing Center. By configuring the settings within the biConfig.xml file, you can enable the integration between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Marketing Center.

Note: The integration between Management Center an IBM Marketing Center is built on the logic for integrating WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Analytics. If your site is integrated with IBM Digital Analytics, you need to add or update only the enablement and URL elements for IBM Marketing Center within the WebSphere Commerce biConfig.xml file to enable the IBM Marketing Center integration.

Before you begin

About this task

When you are updating the biConfig.xml file to define the analytics provider configuration, you can set default values for each configuration setting. By setting default values, you can quickly configure multiple stores to use the same configuration for an analytics provider. You can also override any of the default values for an individual store by including a different value in the configuration for the store. For more information, see Configuring default values for an analytics provider.

Procedure

In your development environment, define your biConfig.xml file, then deploy your file to the WebSphere Commerce enterprise archive (EAR) on your staging or production environment.

WebSphere Commerce DeveloperWhen you are updating the biConfig.xml file in your development environment, you can use a reload file to help you quickly test configuration changes. By using this reload file, you do not need to continually restart your server to apply configuration changes from the biConfig.xml file. For more information, see Using a reload file to test the analytics integration configuration.

  1. Navigate to the following directory, which contains the sample biConfig.xml file:
    • WebSphere Commerce DeveloperWCDE_installdir/components/samples/Coremetrics/xml/biConfig.xml
  2. Copy the sample biConfig.xml file to the following directory:
    • WebSphere Commerce DeveloperWCDE_installdir/workspace/WC/xml/config/bi
  3. Open the biConfig.xml file in an editor.
  4. Configure the settings for your store.
    1. Find a line similar to the following code:
      <store storeId="10101" biprovider="coremetrics" enabled="true" debug="true" marketingCenterEnabled="true"
      			useHostedCMHLibraries="true" useEmailForCustomerId="false" segmentExportMode="append" >
    2. Ensure that the following parameters are set to the correct values:
      storeId
      Specifies the storeId of the store or stores that you want to enable for IBM Marketing Center. You can specify the storeId value as:
      1. A single storeId value.
      2. A comma-separated list of storeId values. For example, specify storeId="10000, 10001" to enable IBM Marketing Center for two stores by using the same IBM Marketing Center client ID that is defined in the configuration.
      3. A range of storeId values. For example, specify storeId="10000-10200" to enable IBM Marketing Center for all of the stores that have storeId values that fall within the range that include the specified upper and lower bounds. The stores that are specified in the range must share the IBM Marketing Center client ID that is defined in the configuration.
      biprovider
      Specifies the analytics provider. Leave this value set to coremetrics, which is the value for IBM Digital Analytics.
      marketingCenterEnabled
      The enablement flag for integrating Management Center with IBM Marketing Center. This flag must be set to true for the integration to be enabled.
      The following elements and attributes are included within the sample file and are specific to integrating WebSphere Commerce with IBM Digital Analytics. If your store does not use this integration, you can remove these parameters or set the value for the parameters to be false.
      • enabled
      • debug
      • useHostedCMHLibraries
      • useEmailForCustomerId
      • segmentExportMode
      For more information about these settings, see Configuring the store to communicate with IBM Digital Analytics(biConfig.xml).
  5. Set the client ID for your store:
    1. Find the following line:
       <clientid>69999999</clientid>
    2. Replace 69999999 with the value of the client ID for your store, as provided by IBM Marketing Center.
  6. Optional: Set a URL to override the URL that Management Center uses to launch IBM Marketing Center.
    By default, when you enable integration with IBM Marketing Center, the integration launches IBM Marketing Center with the following URL:
    https://mc.coremetrics.com/mcwebapp/welcome.do
    If you want Management Center to launch a different URL, you can include a URL within the <marketingCenterUrl></marketingCenterUrl> element to override the default URL.
    1. Locate a line similar to the following code:
      <marketingCenterUrl>https://mc.coremetrics.com/mcwebapp/welcome.do</marketingCenterUrl>
    2. Replace the https://mc.coremetrics.com/mcwebapp/welcome.do value with the full URL path to the URL that you want Management Center to open for IBM Marketing Center.
  7. If your store does not use the integration between WebSphere Commerce and IBM Digital Analytics, you can omit or remove the code that defines the <output>, <header>, and <footer> elements. The settings for these elements are specific to integrating with IBM Digital Analytics and are not needed for IBM Marketing Center integration.
  8. Optional: If you want to configure single sign-on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center, you can add secret key for single sign-on to your biConfig.xml file now. Alternatively, you can configure single sign-on later. For more information about enabling single sign-on, see Enabling single sign-on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center.
  9. Save and close the file.
  10. Restart the WebSphere Commerce server.

What to do next

You can enable single sign-on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center. For more information, see Enabling single sign-on between Management Center and IBM Marketing Center.

Business users can begin to use Management Center to launch IBM Marketing Center for creating campaigns and managing promotion codes. For more information, see Manage marketing externally with IBM Marketing Center. When the integration is enabled, the IBM Marketing Center launch points are added to Management Center. Users can use these launch points to open and begin working in IBM Marketing Center.