Initial planning

Initial planning for Acoustic-managed first-party data collection should include the following steps.

• Walk-through of proposed DNS changes
• Discussion of domain name selection for the data-collection server
• SSL Certificate procurement and maintenance requirements
• Defining privacy policy content, opt-out functionality, and placement.

Determine the sub-domain name for data collection

A sub-domain name needs to be decided upon for data collection. You supply Digital Analytics with a sub-domain name of your choice (entered in field 1 of the Certificate Signing Request form). The name does not need to comply with a particular schema, but it is recommended that the name is consistent with other web names that you already use. The Acoustic Support or Implementation Team can advise you on names that are most inconspicuous.

Examples of a theoretical client's domain:

• www3.CLIENTDOMAIN.com
• server2.CLIENTDOMAIN.com
• newton.CLIENTDOMAIN.com

Complete the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) form

Digital Analytics provides a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) form for you to complete. This form is requested from (and returned after completion to) Acoustic Support or your assigned Implementation Engineer.

Digital Analytics submits your CSR data to the Certifying Authority (CA), and the generated key file is forwarded to you so that you can order SSL certificates. To ensure the expediency and avoid rejections, it is critical that you gather complete and accurate CSR information before submitting the form.

CSRs contain fundamental client information including:

• SSL data collection domain name
• Corporate technical contact information (name, phone, title, address, email address, fax number)
• Location information (address, country, etc.)
• Organizational information (company name, department, etc.)
• Web administration information (contact names, phone numbers, login, etc.)

Acoustic Support or your assigned Implementation Engineer can answer questions and assist you with this process.

Obtain Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates

After you have acquired SSL certificates using the key file provided by Digital Analytics, you must forward the received SSL certificate file to Acoustic Support or your assigned Implementation Engineer. Acoustic Support or the Implementation Engineer installs the certificate file on Server Load Balancers at each of the redundant Digital Analytics data centers.

Note: Whenever possible, use additional licenses rather than additional certificates, to simplify management.

Configure client-side name server

You must configure your Domain Name Server(s) (DNS) with NS records to properly refer to the Digital Analytics Global Load Balancers. This process is not dependent on the presence of the SSL certificates and can be performed in advance of installing certificates.

While unusual, it is possible that a small, one-time fee is assessed by an ISP to add the required DNS records. It is important that proper record format is used when configuring your DNS.

US Data Center example DNS "Name Server" Records for a Data Collection sub-domain (dcd):

<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        ns1.coremetrics.com.
<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        ns2.coremetrics.com.
<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        ns3.coremetrics.com.

Europe Data Center nameserver example DNS records:

<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        de1gslb1.coremetrics.com. 
<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        de2gslb1.coremetrics.com. 
<your dcd>.sitedomain.com         IN         NS        de3gslb1.coremetrics.com.

The NS record TTL values should be set to the DNS provider preference for caching responses to requests from the subdomain (typically this is a high value). There should be only three entries within your DNS settings that contain the subdomain delegated to Digital Analytics. This domain should be delegated for use solely with Digital Analytics data collection - check that there are no other DNS entries for this subdomain. Unless your DNS settings complete this automatically, note that the period (.) at the end of each entry is required. Depending on the interface used to create the entries, the period might be implicitly included.

Making privacy policy updates and implementing the opt-out

Follow industry best practices and obtain all necessary consents from visitors to your website. In addition, we suggest updating privacy policy pages to (1) advise visitors of your data collection and data use practices, (2) notify visitors that cookies are being placed on their computer with an explanation of the purpose and utilization of these cookies, and (3) provide an integrated "opt-out" functionality to accommodate users who choose not to have their browsing data collected.

Activate multisite global sessionization

If you have a multisite implementation, the Site ID value can change during a visit to a single Acoustic-managed data collection domain. To ensure that the visitor is associated with a single session, implement multisite global sessionization. A multisite implementation refers to any HTML website sending tags directly to a native multisite Global ID+SiteID in the format 5xxx0000|<siteid>. A native multisite Global ID starts with a '5' and ends in four zeroes. Legacy 9-series IDs migrated to multisite cannot use or benefit from multisite global sessionization.

To activate this feature for Acoustic-managed first-party multisite implementations, submit a request to Acoustic including your multisite global client ID.

Solution rollout

The final configuration step is to update the cmSetClientID(...) function call to enable Acoustic-managed first-party and set the appropriate Data Collection Domain value. Set the Data Collection Method parameter to the boolean false value. Set the Data Collection Domain parameter to the new <data collection domain>.clientdomain.com value, rather than data.coremetrics.com. Set the Cookie Domain parameter to the 2nd level site domain, or 3rd level in the case of domains with country code top-levels. For example, thesite.co.uk.

Example Acoustic Managed First Party cmSetClientID call where the selected data collection sub-domain is 123.thesite.com:

cmSetClientID("99999999",false,"123.thesite.com","thesite.com");

Accessing the Acoustic-managed visitor cookie

Use the cmRetrieveUserID function to retrieve the Digital Analytics visitor ID that is stored in Acoustic-managed domains or generated by Intelligent Tracking. Acoustic-managed cookies are set in a subdomain delegated to Acoustic control. The client website domain code cannot access the Digital Analytics cookies set in Acoustic-managed domains. Starting with the eluminate tag library version 4.12.16, you can use the cmRetrieveUserID function to retrieve the Digital Analytics visitor ID that is stored in the Acoustic-managed CoreID6 cookie.

To access the cookie, call the cmRetrieveUserID function using a callback function in parameter 1. This will return the CoreID6 visitor ID value. You can also use this function to retrieve visitor ID values that are generated by Intelligen Tracking.

For example:

HTML>
<HEAD>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
cmSetClientID("99999999",false,"data.coremetrics.com","127.0.0.1");
// false = 'Acoustic Managed' Cookies
</script>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<script type="text/javascript">
// tag to set new CoreID6 for demonstration purposes
cmCreateManualLinkClickTag("nolink");
// Retrieve the Visitor ID value from CoreID6, or other source 
(Intelligent Tracking)
function cmRetrieveVisitorCallback(userID) {
  myCoremetricsVisitorID = userID;
  console.log('CoreID6 value from Acoustic: ' + myCoremetricsVisitorID);
}
function get_cmCookieValue() {
  console.log('setting timeout...');
  cmTimeOut = setTimeout(cmTimeOutFunction, 100);
}
function cmTimeOutFunction() {
  var CoreID6FromAcoustic = cmRetrieveUserID(cmRetrieveVisitorCallback);
}
console.log('window onload - start');
var cmTimeOut;
if (window.addEventListener) // All major browsers, except IE 8 and earlier
  { window.addEventListener('load', get_cmCookieValue, false);
} else if (window.attachEvent) // IE 8 and earlier versions
  { window.attachEvent('onload', get_cmCookieValue);
}
</script>
</BODY>
</HTML>