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Commerce and Campaign Features Tour

A Sample Campaign

In previous sections of the tour, the focus was on the commerce features of the sample Web application. The descriptions were primarily intended as an overview for the Java enterprise developers or corporate developers who use the JSP templates and tags to build WebLogic Portal applications.

This final chapter of the tour switches the focus to the campaign features, especially from the perspective of the power users and marketing professionals who use the BEA E-Business Control Center.

The following topics are discussed:

- Introduction and Prerequisites

- Examining a Campaign: TourCampaign1

Introduction and Prerequisites

This tour takes you through a basic sample campaign, and shows you the simple JSP tags that have been inserted in the sample JSP templates. These JSP tags do things like provide placeholders on the Web pages for content that it either associated with a campaign, or operates independently of a campaign. The characteristics of that content is determined by the person who defines the campaigns in the E-Business Control Center, the profiles of people using the Web site, and the events that occur while people are using the Web site.

First, a few basic facts about the BEA E-Business Control Center and campaigns:

- A broad range of users, including power users, marketing professionals, and corporate enterprise developers can use the E-Business Control Center to define and manage promotional campaigns, campaign discounts, stand-alone discounts, customer segments, content selectors, ad placeholders, and custom events.

- A campaign is a named group of scenarios that work together to achieve strategic business goals. A campaign coordinates several WebLogic Portal services to create and track marketing goals on an e-commerce Web site.

- A scenario is the primary building-block of campaigns. A scenario is composed of one or more scenario actions, all of which take place if their criteria are met. For example, if a particular event occurs and if a customer is part of a specified customer segment.

Examining a Campaign: TourCampaign1

To learn about a basic campaign, take the following steps

1. On a supported client Windows system, use the Start menu to start the E-Business Control Center. For example:

   Start —> Programs —> BEA WebLogic Platform —> WebLogic Portal 7.0 —> E-Business Control Center

   The E-Business Control Center client displays a splash screen with a number of Initializing.... messages, and then opens its windows on the desktop.

2. In the E-Business Control Center, choose File —> Open Application in the menu.

   Note: You must load an application in the E-Business Control Center before you can see sample data.

3. Open the following project:

   <BEA_HOME> —> weblogic700 —> samples —> portal —> wlcsDomain —> beaApps —> wlcsApp-project —> wlcsApp-project.

   The wlcsApp sample application loads, as indicated in the E-Business Control Center's title bar.

   This application is a sample enterprise application that ships with WebLogic Portal. You are not loading the enterprise application itself. Rather, you are loading a grouping of XML files that are associated with each tool in the E-Business Control Center. These files, when synchronized to the WebLogic Portal server, will help control the behavior of the enterprise application.

4. In the Explorer window (Figure 7-1), click the Business Logic tab, and then the Campaigns icon in the Explorer window.

   Figure 7-1 Explorer Window

5. Single-click TourCampaign1 file. The description explains that in the Web application, a banner ad will be displayed if a customer belonging to the "Affluent Mr/Ms Fix-It" or "Contractor" customer segments has logged in. We will try the login accounts on the sample JSP templates later. For now, though, let's look at the definitions related to TourCampaign1.

6. Double-click "TourCampaign1." In a few seconds, an editor window is displayed, as shown in Figure 7-2.

   Figure 7-2 Campaign Editor Window

7. Click the Start/Stop bar.

   In the Start/Stop pane, notice the existing start and stop dates for the campaign.

   The End Criteria section of the pane is where you can set goals that, when met, will stop the campaign prior to its end date. Goals are either based on ad impressions (when a visitor simply views an ad on a Web page) or ad clickthroughs (when a visitor actually clicks a displayed ad). You determine the number of impressions or clickthroughs required to meet the goal and end the campaign. In TourCampaign1, this goal is set to 25 ad impressions.

8. To get a closer look at the goal setup, click the goal and then click Edit. The Goal Detail window is displayed, as shown in Figure 7-3.

   Figure 7-3 End Criteria Detail Window

   Notice how this particular campaign is specifying two banner ad graphics that will be displayed. On this screen, the power user or marketing professional can set the target number and characteristics for the campaign, the goal scope, and the goal type.

9. Click OK or Cancel on the End Criteria Detail window. Back on the Editor window for TourCampaign1, click the Start/Stop bar again to minimize it.

10. Click the Scenarios bar to expand its pane. The Ad Scenario for Campaign is listed in the pane.

11. Click the Expand Node button next to the name of the scenario to show the scenario details, as shown in Figure 7-4.

    Figure 7-4 Details Display for Ad Scenario for Campaign

Again, a scenario is the primary building-block of campaigns. A scenario is composed of one or more scenario actions, all of which take place if their criteria are met: if a particular event occurs or if a customer is part of a specified customer segment As you can see, two actions are defined for this scenario. The scenario occurs if:

- The Web site visitor who has just logged in is part of the "Affluent Mr/Ms Fixit" customer segment.

- Or if the Web site visitor who has just logged in is part of the "Contractor" customer segment

As you will recall from Demographics in newuser.jsp (Part 2 of 3), the newuser.jsp template includes a newdemographictemplate.inc file. It contains form fields that allow the person registering with the Web site to characterize themselves in one of several categories. Figure 7-5 shows a portion of the Demographic Options on the newuser.jsp:

Figure 7-5 Demographic Options from newuser.jsp Template

For the sample campaigns, there are two registered customers you need to know about:

- Sue Carpenter: username is suecarpenter; password is password. When she registered with the Web site, Sue's demographic characteristics included Professional and the salary range off $125,000 and above. This puts Sue in the "Contractor" customer segment that is defined in the E-Business Control Center.

- Bob Smith: username is bobsmith; password is password. When he registered with the Web site, Bob's demographic characteristics included "Do It Yourselfer" and the salary range of $100,000 to $149,999. This puts Bob in the "Affluent Mr/Ms Fixup" customer segment that is defined in the E-Business Control Center.

Notice how on the initial main.jsp template for the running Web application, before logging in as any user, the default banner graphics are:

- tourBanner1.gif (top banner that includes the text "Experience Campaigns!"

- tourSide01.gif (side banner that includes the text "Register Now...")

Figure 7-6 shows the initial display for the sample Web application:

Figure 7-6 Initial Display for the Web Application

The tourBanner1.gif and tourSide01.gif images are default images. The placeholder JSP tag is simply:

>     <ph:placeholder name="<%= banner %>" />

To experience the first sample campaign and see what the Web visitor will see, let's access the Web application in a browser:

Note: If the server is not already running, start it as described in Starting the Commerce Server and Templates

- Start —> Programs —> BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0 —> WebLogic Portal 7.0 —> —> Portal Examples —> Commerce Templates —> Start Commerce Templates

Or:

- http://<wl-host>:7501/wlcs (substitute the machine name on which the server is running in the <wl-host> parameter). For example:

>     http://yourserver:7501/wlcs

Click the Log In link in the horizontal navigation section of main.jsp.

When you arrive on the login.jsp template, log in as:

Username: suecarpenter
Password: password

If you entered Sue's username and password correctly, notice the changes when you arrive back on the main.jsp template. Figure 7-7 shows the sample display.

Figure 7-7 Main.jsp Display for Logged-in User Sue Carpenter

Sue is in the Contractor customer segment. Notice the targeted "Contractor's Journal" ad is now used in the banner. The image file name is tourBannerJournal.gif.

Let's go back to the E-Business Control Center.

1. On the Editor window for TourCampaign1, in the Scenarios section, click in the second action that references the Contractor customer segment, as shown in Figure 7-8.

   Figure 7-8 Action that References Contractor Customer Segment

2. With that action highlighted, click the Edit button. On the Ad Action window, click the "ad search" link shown in Figure 7-9.

   Figure 7-9 Notice the "ad search" link on the Ad Action Window

3. Click the "ad search" link. Figure 7-10 shows the Ad Search window.

4. If you are prompted to log on, enter the following:

   Username: system
   Password: weblogic

   The password is set when WebLogic Server is installed. Ask your system administrator for the proper password. You can also have your system administrator add you to the Administrators group in the WebLogic Portal Administration Tools. Then you can use your normal username and password.

   Figure 7-10 Ad Search Window

Of course, you can now see the tourBannerJournal.gif image that is associated with customers in the Contractor customer segment, as defined in the TourCampaign1. If you want, you can highlight the item in the Descriptors row to see how the Preview function works.

On the Web application, you can log out as Sue Carpenter and then log in as Bob Smith. (The username is bobsmith and the password is password.) Bob is in the "Affluent Mr/Ms Fixup" customer segment. Figure 7-11 shows the main.jsp display for the logged in Bob Smith.

Figure 7-11 Main.jsp Display for Logged In User Bob Smith

As you can see, the targeted banner ad for Bob Smith is using the tourBannerFixup.gif image. You can confirm this in the E-Business Control Center by following the scenario action that references the Affluent Mr/Ms Fixup customer segment.

After you create a new placeholder in the E-Business Control Center, a corporate enterprise developer must use a special tag (the <ph:placeholder> JSP tag) in the location that you want to display ads. For example, if you create a placeholder to display ads in the top banner, a corporate enterprise developer must add a <ph:placeholder> tag to the top banner.

When a customer accesses a page that contains a placeholder JSP tag, the tag starts the process of choosing a query, running the query, and then generating the HTML tags that the browser needs to display the ad.

Once a corporate enterprise developer uses this tag on a page on your Web site, you use the E-Business Control Center to change the queries that the tag can run; you do not need a corporate enterprise developer to modify the tag.