Click trail in ADF or SmartTarget triggers?

Question

Jan Horsman clarified SmartTarget triggers in this answer. How would we implement a trigger (for SmartTarget 2014) that "matches on part of the URL" for the current and/or past pages visited in a given session?

The use case would be: based on a visitor's path through a site, promote this set of content.

Default ST Triggers?

By default, we have a trigger for Session - Original Referrer, but I believe that's the last URL (in the session) before visiting the delivery website, right? I might be reading the list wrong, but I don't see any default SmartTarget triggers for the current URL.

ADF?

The documentation for ADF claims, which SmartTarget relies on, describes:

"Web server session-related server data—for example, session length, click trail and so on..."

• For the current page, it looks like we have REQUEST_FULL_URL or REQUEST_URI
• Should we get previously visited pages (in the click trail) from one of the other default ADF claims such as SERVER_VARIABLES or SESSION_ATTRIBUTES?

Claims

Answer 1

There's nothing in the ADF specifically for this scenario, so you'd need to implement it yourself.

I would start by narrowing down what you actually want to pick in the Promotion editing screen. You probably do not want to have to enter the specific URLs that the user must have visited, right? Instead it should probably be a limited list of specific touch points such as Help Section, Homepage, Campaign Landing Page, etc.

Once you've figured out the options you want to expose in the Promotion editing screen, you should write a cartridge that exposes that information as triggers. It would need to track the visits to each section (based on the URL indeed) and add each one to the trigger value that is in the Query. So when the URL is the Campaign Landing Page, you 'check the mark' for that in the trigger so-to-speak. Once all values are in the trigger, the Promotion would fire.

Answer 2

Original referrer is a domain

We have a trigger for Session - Original Referrer, but I believe that's the last URL (in the session) before visiting the delivery website, right?

Kind of, it is the last domain before visiting the delivery website. The Session - Original Referrer is the external website which linked through to your website. So let's say you have a link coming from sdltridionworld.com/community/developers/alvin-reyes.aspx to createandbreak.net, then the Session - Original Referrer in the createandbreak.net site would be sdltridionworld.com.

Original referrer is an OOTB trigger

I might be reading the list wrong, but I don't see any default SmartTarget triggers for the current URL.

I think this trigger is available OOTB, see the screenshot below and the sc_refererdomain in the OOTB trigger types configuration.

Click trail

This click trail is mentioned in the Tridion documentation.

I think previously visited pages, other than the Original Referrer domain, are not kept in the ADF session OOTB. You could implement a trigger which keep track of this. Maybe setting a flag when certain sections are visited would be most practical since that would easily translate in a section XYZ visited trigger.