Want to see how everything connects together? Watch this freaking awesome video.
Want to know the details? Keep reading….
I recently was presented with an interesting problem: Return a chunk of content from a CMS based on the Offer that Test&Target served up to a visitor.
After doing a little digging in Test&Target online help, I discovered Widget Offers, which are defined as “similar to a standard offer hosted outside of Test&Target. They allow Test&Target to deploy offer content that’s stored on your server, allowing for more sophisticated and dynamic usage. Widget offers provide some dynamic content generation capabilities that other offers outside of Test&Target do not. If the mbox serving the offer contains mbox parameters such as mbox.offerId that is appended to the requested URL.”
This is perfect!!!
Not so fast. The solution seems a perfect fit but the documentation left a ton of holes in how to actually get a Widget Offer to work. So, I hope my 5+ hours of banging my head against the desk, digging for secret information, and trial & error, will help save you the headache and give you a jump start on utilizing Widget Offers to test dynamic content.
Here is the top secret stuff that you need to know:
→ Retrieve the Offer Id via a Test&Target Plugin
In order to expose the Offer Id, you will need to create a new Test&Target Plug-in using the following code.
→ Offer Id mBox Parameter
The Offer Id Parameter name is not very clear in any of the online help but I have confirmed that the following format works:
“offerId=”+[OFFER_ID]
→ Pass in Offer Id via mboxUpdate
I originally tried to pass in the Offer Id on mboxCreate but this failed, which makes sense, the Offer Id isn’t available until after the mBox is created and evaluated, so you can use mboxUpdate to pass in the Offer Id.
→ Widget File Must Contain a Defined Charset
This one really drove me crazy. I had everything working, the plug-in setup, the page code applied, my server side code humming, but when I tried to create the Widget Offer, everything came to a screeching halt. I pointed the offer to my server side file and every time I tried to save, I was presented with the following error:
The specified URL does not return valid text or HTML content. Verify the URL in your web browser.
Don’t ask me how but I finally discovered that if I simply defined a default Charset in my server side code, everything worked beauitfully. So take my advice, just add this one little line of code to the top of your file:
→The Widget Offer Is Cached
The Widget Offer is cached for 2 hours, so if you are making changes to your widget file and aren’t seeing the changes take effect, clear your cache and try again.
Adam Greco
Emer Kirrane
Eric Peterson
Evan LaPointe
Kevin Rogers
Michele Hinojosa
Pritesh Patel
Rudi Shumpert
Lessons I learned from a School Teacher Mom: Managing Out of Pocket
For as long as I can remember, my mom has been an elementary school teacher. Almost every Saturday, I remember going to the local Utah-Idaho School Supply, watching my mom load up a basket of supplies that she would ultimately purchase with money out of her own pocket. When I was younger, it didn’t bother me too much as I was the recipient of cool sticker books every time we went to purchase supplies for the classroom but as I got older, I became confused on why she was doing this. I never asked my mom ‘why’ but as I saw how the kids in her class were learning and the experiences they were receiving, compared with other classes, the ‘why’ became apparent.
I knew the budgets for school teachers were very tight but I also knew that my mom was dedicated to giving the kids she taught experiences that would stay with them for a lifetime. To her, it was a no-brainer to purchase materials for her classroom out of pocket because she knew that the investment she was making would pay off again and again, over the lifetime of each of the kids she taught.
Whether my mom knew it or not, she was teaching me a very valuable lesson in the process. Right out of college, I found myself buying things for my team out of my own pocket. My colleagues and my bosses would question me on ‘why’ and I never really had an answer, it was just instinctual. A $20 box of donuts here, a technical manual there, software, music, headphones, lunches…it just happened naturally and my team responded with dedication, hard work, and creativity.
I’ve also seen how the flip side of this can be so damaging to team morale. In a previous job, I asked for an iMac rather than the standard Dell issued desktop computer. I didn’t ask because I wanted to be a pain-in-the-ass, I asked because I’ve always used an Apple (In Jr. High School, I wrote my term papers using Bank Street Writer on my Apple IIe) and because there were two iMacs laying around that no one was using. However, my job code dictated that I use a Dell desktop as the iMacs were set aside for employes with a job code that defined them as being in a “creative” position.
Was there software that I needed that only ran on a Mac? No. Was the Mac necessary for me to do my job? No. Would the Mac make me more productive and happier? Hell yes! Had my boss had the flexibility to think outside corporate policy and manage out of pocket, my experience, like the kids in my mom’s 2nd grade class, would have been that much greater.
Managers seem to get caught up in the long term plans of career development, quarterly goals, internal promotions, and corporate process. Don’t get me wrong, all of these things are very important but it’s the little things that happen everyday, like managing out of pocket, that have lasting impacts on employees and ultimately make the employee, the manager, and the organization as a whole more successful.