Adobe Launch Linking to DTM

Earlier this week I mentioned a feature that allows you to link your Adobe Launch files to your old DTM files. Some have asked me for more details so you now get this follow-up post.

Essentially this feature allows you to make the transition from DTM to Launch easier for sites that were already implemented with DTM. How does it make it easier? Well, let’s say you are an implementation manager who spent years getting DTM in place across 100+ sites that are each running on different platforms and managed by a multitude of internal and external groups. That isn’t a process that most people get excited to revisit. To avoid all that, Adobe has provided this linking feature. As you create a new configuration in Launch those Launch files can just replace your DTM files.

Let’s imagine that you have a setup where a variety of sites are currently pointing to DTM code and your newer implementations are pointing to Launch code. This assumes you are using one property across many sites which may or may not be a good idea depending on your needs. You could visualize it like below where the production environment for both products is used by different sites.

Once you enable the linking, the production code is now shared between the two products. The new visual would look something like this:

It is just a one-way sharing, though. If you were to link and then publish from DTM that would not impact your Launch files. It would impact the DTM files. It’s best to get to the point where you have published in Launch and then just disable the DTM property.

How to Enable Linking

Here is how it is done if you are starting from a brand new property in Launch. You should do these steps before any site is using the Production embed script from Launch. This is because Adobe will give you a new embed code during this process.

1. The new property will already have Environments enabled (this may be new, I was under the impression you had to create the environments from scratch). Find your Production environment, consider the warning above, and, if all is well, delete it.

1. Once deleted then hit the Add Environment button and select Production. This will allow you to add a new Production environment to replace the one you just deleted.
2. As you are configuring the environment  just toggle the “Link DTM embed code” on and paste in your DTM embed code.

1. Save your settings and if everything checks out ok you will be given new Production embed code. This embed code is what you would use for any production sites.

Other Considerations

• The embed code will change every time you delete and add a new Production environment. You’ll want sites with the Launch embed code to have the latest version. I haven’t tested what will happen if you try to implement a site with the old Production embed code. It makes me uneasy, though, so I would just avoid it.
• Note that in my picture above I only show the Production environment being shared. This actually brings up an important point around testing. If you have a staging version of the old sites that uses the staging version of the DTM script then you really can’t test the migration to Launch. The linking only updates the production files. But really you neeeed to test. In order to do this I would recommend just using a tool like Charles or Chrome overrides to rewrite the the DTM embed code to your Launch embed code.
• Watch out for old methods. When Adobe warned of the transition from DTM to Launch they noted that only the methods below will be supported. If you did something crazy on your site that has outside-of-DTM scripts using something in the _satellite object then you’ll need to figure out an alternative. Once you publish your Launch files to the DTM location, any other methods previously made available by DTM may not be there anymore. Here are the methods that you can still use:
  • _satellite.notify()
  • _satellite.track()
  • _satellite.getVar()
  • _satellite.setVar()
  • _satellite.getVisitorId()
  • _satellite.setCookie()
  • _satellite.readCookie()
  • _satellite.removeCookie()
  • _satellite.isLinked()
• You can see Adobe’s documentation around this feature here. Especially important are the prerequisites for enabling the linking (DTM and Launch need to be associated with the same org, etc)