Good questions, let me answer in 6 parts.
1) Audience manager claims
According to the documentation (login required) Audience Manager provides claims for segments and contact details, like
- taf:claim:audiencemanager:contact:segments
- taf:claim:audiencemanager:contact:enabled
If you are not using audience manager you could have your own code populating those claims, and use the OOTB triggers in SDL SmartTarget / SDL Fredhopper. However I feel that this would be ambiguous, your code would be pretending to do something with Audience Manager, and maybe the data available in your system would not have the same meaning as Adience Manager.
Better would be to implement your own claims, so define a set of relevant claims, like taf:claim:customername:segments and taf:claim:customername:contact:subscribed.
Do the following to implement your custom claims, this is documented in the SDL Tridion core documentation and SDL SmartTarget documentation.
- define the claim uris, just think of logic name, you will use them in the next steps
- write a cartridge which defines the claims and populates them
- in some exception cases: populate the claims in webapp code instead of populating them in the cartridge
- add the cartridge to the web application and register it in cd_ambient_conf.xml
- tell SmartTarget to use the claims as trigger types by adding the taf:claim:customername:contact "path" to the webapp's smartarget_conf.xml
- add the related triggers in the trigger-types.xml in SDL Fredhopper
- enable XPM Footprint set by adding the claim to TRIDION_HOME\web\WebUI\Models\SiteEdit\Configuration and TRIDION_HOME\web\WebUI\Editors\SiteEdit\Configuration in the Tridion CME
- tell the webapp to allow XPM to set the claim by adding the claims in the globally accept list in cd_ambient_conf.xml
Check the manual for each of the configuration points above to learn where to find this configuration and for which services to restart/reload.
It's as easy as that, with these steps you use the supported mechanism to implement your own triggers, with full XPM integration, just like any of the OOTB triggers.
2) Values for trigger types
The list of values for Trigger types is optional. Add it and you will get to select those pre defined values when editing a promotion, leave it out and you will get a text box instead.
3) Keywords in model config
These are Tridion keywords. Mind that this config file is from the Tridion CME. I think this is the keyword value as the value property of a keyword is unique in a category.
4) Search
This is for SmartTarget search. Faceted navigation is another thing.
Use case)
To target specific pages you could do a couple of things
- Set up different regions, this works for i.e. the home page, search page, all product pages, etc. So for a limited list of regions.
- To allow users to target specific pages in a promotion you could use a trigger instead, like you mentioned you can use keyword triggers for this, you could tag pages and set the page's keyword in a trigger.
- Or just use a trigger with matches on part of the URL, for example the promotion applies for URLs which start with "products\new-arrivals".
- For another level of flexibility, let the editor put a region on a page with a component presentation. The CP can add the region on the page. The list of regions would still be limited as regions have to be defined in SmartTarget configuration.
Older versions)
Indeed in previous versions editors would create and edit promotions in the SDL Fredhopper Business Manager (the Fredhopper GUI). In SmartTarget 2014 the promotions are managed in the Targeting slide-out menu.
In SmartTarget 2014 the setup of regions is easier, it moved form the SDL Fredhopper configuration to smarttarget_conf.xml
p.s.
"Non-targetted page-specific presentations" are sometimes called component presentations embedded on a page ;)
