Send Sitecore CDP Events

Description

Sitecore CDP offers a robust mechanism for capturing and organizing user data from your website. To effectively gather data, CDP relies on events as the primary means of transmitting information. Behind the scenes, CDP operates as an extensive database, storing individual user sessions and all the events associated with each session. This repository of user-specific data becomes a valuable resource, providing comprehensive insights into user behavior and preferences.

Events play a crucial role in CDP's data collection process. They act as data markers, capturing important interactions and actions performed by users on your site. CDP allows you to view these events categorized by session, presenting a user-friendly interface that simplifies data analysis for both technical and non-technical users. This transparency enables anyone to gain a clear understanding of user activities on your site.

By default, CDP includes essential events that are applicable to most websites, such as pageviews, identity events, add to cart, and checkout events. These pre-defined events offer valuable information about user engagement and conversion activities. However, CDP understands that every website is unique, and there may be specific events that are relevant to your business and require tracking. To accommodate this need, CDP allows you to define and send custom events tailored to your specific requirements. Custom events provide granular insights into user interactions, allowing you to understand and personalize user experiences in more detail.

Moreover, CDP offers the flexibility to include additional data with default and custom events. For example, when a pageview event occurs, you can supplement it with supplementary information about the specific page the user is viewing. This added context enriches the data, providing a more comprehensive understanding of user actions within the given context.

Events

In order to send events, you need to have your site connected to your CDP account using the Sitecore Engage library. You can see how to connect your site here: CDP Introduction. This library does a lot of things for you, so sending events is really easy! To see the official documentation go here: Sitecore CDP developer documentation.

Examples

let viewEvent = {
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    page: "Home",
    currency: "USD",
};
  
await engage.pageView(viewEvent);

Identity Event

Identity Event

For this event, in addition to all the needed attributes, you need to send the identifiers attribute, which is an array of objects where you define the provider and the id. The provider is the name of your organization’s identity system. You can see it in your CDP account by going to settings and clicking on the Identity rules.

In this case, the provider needs to be ‘email’.

Also, you can optionally send a lot more information (PII) in the identity event as string attributes:
email, title, firstName, lastName, gender, dob, mobile, phone, street, city, state, country, postalCode.
To send this event just add this code:

let email = "paul.bonilla@test.com"
let event = {
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    currency: "USD",
    page: "Login",
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    email: email,
    identifiers: [
      {
        provider: "email",
        id: email,
      },
    ],
};
engage.identity(event);

Copy to clipboard

let name = 'Nike Shoe 1';
let type = 'shoe';
let item_id = 'shoe_1';
let product_id = 'Nike_Shoe';
let reference_id = 'ORDER_001';
let ordered_at = new Date().toISOString();
let price = 100;
let product = {
    name: name,
    type: type,
    item_id: item_id,
    product_id: product_id,
    referenceId: reference_id,
    orderedAt: ordered_at,
    quantity: 1,
    price: price,
    currency: "USD"
};
let addEvent = {
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    currency: "USD",
    page: "Home",
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
    product: product,
};
engage.event("ADD", addEvent);

let confirmEvent = {
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    currency: "USD",
    page: "Home",
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    product: [
      { item_id: 'shoe_1' }
    ],
};
engage.event("CONFIRM", confirmEvent);

let checkoutEvent = {
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    currency: "USD",
    page: "Home",
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    reference_id: "ORDER_001",
    status: "PURCHASED",
};
engage.event("CHECKOUT", checkoutEvent);

let closeSession = {
    channel: "WEB",
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
};
engage.event("FORCE_CLOSE", closeSession);

let customEvent= {
    channel: "WEB",
    language: "EN",
    currency: "USD",
    page: "Home",
    pos: window.Engage.settings.pointOfSale,
    browser_id: window.Engage.getBrowserId(),
    custom_attribute: 'Any custom value',
};
engage.event("PAUL_CUSTOM_EVENT", customEvent);

Results

If you have sent all the events until this point in order, go to CDP and search your guest. There you should be able to see 2 sessions. The first session is going to have all the events sent before the FORCE_CLOSE event (VIEW, IDENTITY, ADD, CONFIRM, CHECKOUT). Because there is a checkout event in this session, the session is going to be a converted session and you will see the value of it.

If you click on View Session Details, you will see all the events sent to that session.

The second session should only have the custom event.