(cross-posted from the 33 Sticks blog)
There’s a lot of talk about how Adobe Launch is backwards-compatible- that, aside from a few _satellite methods that may not still work (that were probably not supported to begin with), anything you had in DTM should still work in Launch. But, well, not EVERYTHING in DTM is still going to work in Launch, and some things in Launch may catch you off guard. Here are some things you should be aware of:
Far fewer things happen automatically. For instance, Adobe Analytics no longer automatically fires a beacon on page load (which I view as a wonderful thing, but you still need to be aware of it). You need to set it up (and things like loading Target or firing Mboxes) in a rule.
The following _satellite methods (among others, but these are the most common) are no longer supported (or, in some cases, may never have been supported but now simply won’t work).
- _satellite.getQueryParam/_satellite.getQueryParamCaseInsensitive
- _satellite.notify (this still technically works, but you should migrate to _satellite.logger)
- _satellite.URI
- _satellite.cleanText
- _satellite.setCookie (which is now _satellite.cookie.set) and _satellite.readCookie (which is now _satellite.cookie.get)
There is some interface functionality in DTM that is not yet in Launch:
- There is no “notes” functionality currently (though I hear that is coming soon)
- It’s not easy to do a revision comparison (diff compare) currently (though again, I hear that is in the works).
Launch still has console debugging, but it no longer alerts you to what “SATELLITE DETECTED” (which I used a lot to troubleshooting bubbling issues)- it merely tells you what rules are firing, etc.
Some tools like Tagtician or Disruptive Advertising’s DTM Debugger are not yet fully Launch-compatible. (Tagtician supports Launch but is working on improving how it handles it; I don’t know if the DTM Debugger has any plans to become Launch-compatible).
The Adobe Analytics extension does not support multiple Adobe instances, nor can you have multiple Adobe Analytics extensions installed. (Multi-suite tagging is still ok).
The Google Analytics extension does not support multiple GA instances.
Some things have been renamed in a way that may throw you off- for instance, you can still easily have a Rule condition be based on a Data Element value- it’s just named “Value Comparison” now.
While Launch gives you much more control over the order things happen in, be aware that while actions within a rule will START in the specified sequence, they may not COMPLETE in sequence: Action 1 will start, then Action 2 will start whether Action 1 is finished or not. This is particularly significant if the actions are just code (for instance, I had my first action try to pull information from an API, and my second action then use that info to fire a pixel… but the pixel kept firing before the API had done its thing). I hear that users may eventually get more control over this, but for now this is how it is.
Adapters can be confusing (fortunately Jimalytics clears it up nicely on his blog). These days, Adobe automatically creates a “Managed by Adobe” adapter, and that single adapter should work for multiple environments.
None of these are necessarily a reason to not upgrade- especially since Adobe now has a plan for sunsetting DTM. But hopefully you won’t be caught unaware by any of these items. Has anything else surprised you about Launch? Let us know!