SmartTarget Extensions: Better Security on Promotion Management

If you have used SmartTarget, you will probably know that the security model for managing promotions is pretty basic – you either have rights to manage promotions or you don’t. On my current implementation we have different business units managing their own SmartTarget promotions for various sites and applications, all within the same CMS, so all able to view, edit (and accidentally break!) each others promotions. This post shows a simple solution we came up with to ensure each user could only manage appropriate promotions.

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Custom Renderer – Index Keyword Key in SmartTarget

keywords in SmartTargetI found out how to use a new CM-side extension point today; Renderers. I had been struggling for a while with the fact that SmartTarget does not index the Keyword key – which was precisely what I wanted to set up some promotion content selection filters on. It turns out to be quite easy, and indeed gives a generic method for messing with the content that SmartTarget indexes without having to fiddle about on the Delivery side with Java or Kettle.

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Website Optimisation using SmartTarget

target_audienceLast week I had the pleasure of attending the SDL Innovate conference in San Francisco. This years event was the best yet, for three (and possibly more) very good reasons:

  • There was an extra day deep diving into SDL technology, looking at what happens under the hood of the suite and ask questions to SDL implementation experts
  • There was a Hackathon day which brought a huge amount of developers out of the woodwork to collaborate on some cool open source SDL modules
  • I was there to present ‘Website optimisation using SDL SmartTarget’

OK maybe that’s not truly a valid reason to claim innovate was better, but if you are interested in SmartTarget and couldn’t make the event, you can find my presentation slides after the jump.

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Plugging the Context Engine into SmartTarget

smart target logoThe SDL Context Engine Cartridge is a Content Delivery cartridge that integrates with the Ambient Data framework of SDL Tridion. The Context Engine essentially provides a huge amount of information about the device, browser and operating system of your website visitor.   This seemed like a perfect cartridge to integrate with SDL SmartTarget, so after immediately doing so, I thought I’d share my configuration.

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