Administer the Recommendations Portal

The Recommendations Portal is the user interface for accessing Product Recommendations, Email Product Recommendations, Email Content Recommendations, Triggered Messages, and Promoted Content (legacy). Features include automatic product recommendations online and through email.

You can do the following functions with the Admin view.

• Site Management – You can see how a site is configured but can modify site attributes only by contacting Optimizely Support. 
• User Management – Using a user's CUID or IP address, you can view a snapshot of current user activity.

Site Management

Feed Configuration

You can view the import status of your site's product catalog feeds. The status is Successful or Error. If you get an error status, click Error for more details.

Feeds are automatically imported daily by schedule into the Optimizely Recommendations system, but you can contact Optimizely Support to have a feed processed manually.

Products

Select Products to display enabled products according to your agreement with Optimizely.

• In-session triggers – Select whether in-session triggers are enabled.
• Daily triggers – Select whether daily triggers are enabled.
• Scheduled time – Enter the time when daily triggers go into effect.
• Hashed email address – Select whether hashed email addresses can be viewed.
• Manage ESP – Select the email service provider.
• Save – Save the specified settings.
• Cancel – Dismiss changes and return to the previous settings.

Product Catalog Viewer

Enter a refCode or title in the search field to display products from your catalog.

Settings

The site Settings page displays the following site attributes. Contact Optimizely Support if you need to change the settings.

• Default currency – Click to change the default currency for your site.
• Default time zone – Click to change the time zone for your site.
• Online order updates – Shows whether online order updates are accepted. If this is Off and a customer wants to add something to their online order, they will have to make a separate online order; if On, the customer can change their online order.
• Offline order updates – Shows whether offline order updates are accepted. If this is Off and a customer wants to add something to their in-store order, they will have to make a separate in-store order; if On, the customer can change their in-store order.
• Save – Saves the specified settings.
• Cancel – Dismisses changes and returns to the previous settings.

Development

The Development page includes the Service URL and Site tokens.

• Service URL – Displays your default service URL where you need to send tracking data to receive recommendations.
• Site tokens – For native clients, displays the values of your tokens. The Site admin token is necessary when embedding the Recommendations Portal in the Optimizely global navigation; the client tokens are what you provide in the tracking request. See clientToken in the Common elements developer documentation.

User Management

Session Viewer

You can view a user's session activity on a site using their CUID, or you can view your session activity using your CUID or your IP address. The session viewer lets you verify that tracking is sent to the Recommendations servers and recommendations are returned, with user interactions tracked correctly. See Track and recommend for information about how to use the session viewer after you set it up and what you should look for when you debug your site.

To view a user's session activity in the Recommendations Portal:

1. Go to Admin > User Management > Session Viewer.
2. Enter the CUID into the CUID field and click Find session.

   

To find your CUID:

1. Go to your website.
2. Press F12 to open the developer tools.
3. In Chrome, click Application. In Edge or Firefox, click Storage.
4. Open the Cookies drop-down list and select the domain for your website.
5. In the table, for native clients, find the value of the epi_RecommendationsTrackingUserId cookie, or for standalone clients, find the value of the peerius_user cookie, and copy the CUID number (cuid=1234567890|xxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxxxxxxxx).

You also can enter your IP address to view your activity.

If your CUID and session are active, you should see an entry under the session tab that will match your session and CUID values (as shown in the following image).

If no sessions are shown, try refreshing the page on the site being tested, or go to some other page on your site and try again.

Clicking the area that contains the session information activates a list of tracking history on the right-hand side of the page for that user or session. The rows include information about the page type being tracked and the timestamp of the request, which can help to find specific requests when debugging issues. The rows are ordered from top to bottom based on the most recent to oldest requests. New requests are added to the top of the stack.

Clicking a row on the right-hand side opens the Console tab, containing more details about the page. This is divided into the following sections:

• Request – Contains information about the page, such as URL and timestamp. Most importantly, this tab shows the JSON payload received by Recommendations. See Tracking request format for information about the payload contents.
• Response – Shows the widgets returned for the current request and the generated recommendations. This is available in JSON format or as an indexed list of recommendations and the key data associated with each, such as recommendationId, refcode, and title.
• Track Info – Shows key tracking information after being processed by the system. For example, product page requests show more details related to the product, such as associated attributes and prices from the latest feed import.

You can view each tab in the default JSON or raw format for a more condensed view. You can expand or collapse entries in the JSON view.