Set up an event-forwarding property
Learn how to use event-forwarding property using Experience Platform Web SDK data.
Event forwarding is a new type of property available in Data Collection. Event forwarding gives you the ability to send data to third-party, non-Adobe vendors straight from the Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network instead of the traditional client-side browser. Find out more about the advantages of event forwarding in the Event Forwarding overview.
To use event forwarding in Adobe Experience Platform, data must be sent to Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network first using one or more of the following three options:
After completing the previous lessons in this tutorial, you should be sending data to Platform Edge Network using the Web SDK. Once the data is in Platform Edge Network, you can enable event forwarding and use an event-forwarding property to send data to non-Adobe solutions.
Learning objectives
At this end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Create an event-forwarding property
- Link an event-forwarding property to a Platform Web SDK datastream
- Understand the differences between tag property data elements and rules and event-forwarding property data elements and rules
- Create an event-forwarding data element
- Configure an event-forwarding rule
- Validate an event-forwarding property is successfully sending data
Prerequisites
-
A software license which includes event forwarding. Event forwarding is a paid feature of Data Collection. Please contact your Adobe Account Team for more details.
-
Event forwarding enabled in your Experience Cloud organization.
-
User permission for event forwarding. (In Admin Console, under the Adobe Experience Platform Launch product, permission items forPlatforms > Edge and all Property Rights). Once granted you should see Event Forwarding in the left navigation of the Data Collection interface:
-
Adobe Experience Platform Web or Mobile SDK configured to send data to Edge Network. You must have completed the following lessons of this tutorial:
Create an event-forwarding property
Begin by creating an event-forwarding property:
-
Open the Data Collection interface
-
Select Event Forwarding from the left navigation
-
Select New Property.
-
Name the property. In this case
Server-Side - Web SDK Course
-
Select Save.
Configure the datastream
For event forwarding to use the data you send to the Edge network, you must link the newly created event-forwarding property to the same datastream used to send data to Adobe solutions.
To configure Target in the datastream:
-
Go to Data Collection interface
-
On the left navigation, select Datastreams
-
Select the previously created
Luma Web SDK
datastream -
Select Add Service
-
Select Event Forwarding as the Service
-
Under the Property ID dropdown, select the name you gave to your event-forwarding property, in this case
Server-Side - Web SDK Course
-
Under the Environment ID dropdown, select the tag environment you are linking the event forwarding environment to, in this case
Development
note tip TIP To send data to an event forwarding environment outside the Adobe org, select Manually enter IDs and paste in an ID. The ID is provided when you create an event-forwarding property. -
Select Save.
Repeat these steps for staging and production datastreams when you are ready to promote your changes through the publishing flow.
Forward data from the Platform Edge Network to a non-Adobe solution
In this exercise you will learn how to set up an event-forwarding data element, configure an event-forwarding rule, and validate using a third-part tool called Webhook.site.
Create an event-forwarding data element
The XDM object you previously configured using the Platform Web SDK tag extension becomes the data source for data elements in an event-forwarding property. You use the same data that you have already configured in the tag property as a data source for event-forwarding.
arc.event
prefix:arc
stands for Adobe Response Context.- For example:
arc.event.xdm.web.webPageDetails.URL
In this exercise, you will forward the browser viewport height and the Experience Cloud ID from the XDM Object to a webhook. The XDM field path is determined by the XDM schema created during the Configure an XDM schema lesson.
/ee
requests, opening the beacon Payload and drilling down to the variable you are looking for. Then right-click with your mouse and select “Copy property path”. Here is an example for the Browser Viewport Height:-
Go to the Event Forwarding property you recently created
-
On the left navigation, select Data Elements
-
Select to Create New Data Element
-
Name the data element
environment.browserDetails.viewportHeight
-
Under Extension, leave
CORE
-
Under Data Element Type, select
Path
-
Type-in the XDM Object path that contains the Browser Viewport Height
arc.event.xdm.environment.browserDetails.viewportHeight
-
Select Save
-
Create another data element
-
Name it
ecid
-
Under Extension, leave
CORE
-
Under Data Element Type, select
Path
-
Type-in the XDM object path that contains the Experience Cloud ID
arc.event.xdm.identityMap.ECID.0.id
-
Select Save
note caution CAUTION Make sure to include the arc.event.
prefix in the path. Also, make sure to follow the exact case as the XDM Object field name—the ECID namespace must be in all caps.note tip TIP When working with your own website, you can find the XDM object path with your web browser network tools, filtering for /ee
requests, opening the beacon Payload and drilling down to the variable you are looking for. Then right-click with your mouse and select “Copy property path”. Here is an example for the Browser Viewport Height:
Install Adobe Cloud Connector extension
To send data to third-party locations, you will first install the Adobe Cloud Connector extension.
-
Select Extensions on the left navigation
-
Select the Catalog tab
-
Search for the Adobe Cloud Connector, select Install
There is no extension configuration needed. With this extension, you can now forward data to a non-Adobe solution!
Create an event-forwarding rule
There are a few main differences between configuring rules in a tag property and a rule in an event-forwarding property:
-
Events & Conditions:
- Tags: All rules are triggered by an Event which must be specified in the rule, for example,
Library Loaded - Page Top
. Conditions are optional. - Event forwarding: It is assumed that every event sent to Platform Edge Network is a trigger to forward data. Therefore, there are no Events that must be selected in event-forwarding rules. To manage which events trigger an event-forwarding rule, you must configure conditions.
- Tags: All rules are triggered by an Event which must be specified in the rule, for example,
-
Data element tokenization:
-
Tags: Data element names are tokenized with a
%
at the beginning and end of the data element name when used in a rule. For example,%viewportHeight%
. -
Event forwarding: Data element names are tokenized with
{{
at the beginning and}}
at the end of the data element name when used in a rule. For example,{{viewportHeight}}
.
-
-
Sequence of rule actions:
- The Actions section of an event forwarding rule is always executed sequentially. Make sure the order of actions is correct when you save a rule. This execution sequence cannot be executed asynchronously like it can with tags.
To configure a rule to forward data to your webhook, you must first obtain your personal webhook:
-
Go to Webhook.site
-
Find Your unique URL, you will use this as the URL request in your event-forwarding rule
-
Select Copy to clipboard
-
Leave this window open as you will be able to validate the event forwarding data in real time being captured by Webhook
-
Go back Data Collection > Event Forwarding > Rules from the left navigation
-
Select Create New Rule
-
Name it
all events - ad cloud connector - webhook
-
Add an Action
-
Under Extension, select Adobe Cloud Connector
-
Under Action Type, select Make Fetch Call
-
Paste your Webhook URL in the URL field
-
Under [Query Params], you will add both data elements you created earlier.
-
On the Key column type in
viewPortHeight
. On the Value column, enter the{{environment.browserDetails.viewportHeight}}
data element by either typing it in or selecting from the data element selector icon -
Select + Add Another to add another query parameter
-
On the Key column type in
ecid
. On the Value column, enter the{{ecid}}
data element -
Select Keep Changes
-
Your rule should look like below
-
Select Save
Create and build the library
Create a library and build all the changes to your event-forwarding development environment as you normally would in a tag property.
Validate event-forwarding rule
Now you can validate your event-forwarding property using the Platform Debugger, and Webhook.site:
-
Follow the steps to switch the tag library on the Luma Demo site to the Web SDK tag property to which you mapped your event-forwarding property in the datastream.
-
Before you reload the page, on the Experience Platform Debugger open Logs from the left navigation
-
Select the Edge tab, then select Connect to view the Platform Edge Network requests
-
Reload the page
-
You will see additional requests that give you visibility into the server-side requests being sent by the Platform Edge Network to the WebHook
-
The request to focus validation on is the one showing the fully constructed URL being sent by the Edge network
-
Note the viewPortHeight and ecid query string parameters
-
They match the data seen in the XDM Object
-
Lastly, validate the data matches in Webhook.site as well by viewing your open Webhook window
Congratulations! You have configured event forwarding!