Connect to Digital Experience Cloud
NOTE: Sitefinity Digital Experience Cloud (DEC) was renamed to Sitefinity Insight as a part of the Sitefinity 13.0 release. However, Sitefinity CMS and its documentation prior to version 13.0 continue using the former name - Digital Experience Cloud.
You connect each Sitefinity CMS instance separately and to a specific data center. If you are working in multisite mode, you can choose a specific data center to track each of the sites. That is, to track the sites separately.
IMPORTANT:
To ensure communication between Digital Experience Cloud and Sitefinity CMS is not restricted and consequently tracking and personalization are functioning, you need to modify your system’s firewall settings. For details, see the Troubleshoot connection issues section below.
Configure the DEC deployment URL
Prior to connecting your Sitefinity CMS instance to Digital Experience Cloud you must first specify the desired DEC deployment URL. The URL determines the DEC API server location which will be used for storing and querying your instance-specific information.
The DEC API server location must correspond to the location specified, when your DEC account has been created. By default, Sitefinity CMS is configured to connect to the DEC deployment, hosted in the US. If you have created your DEC account in the US, you can skip this step and proceed to the Connect to DEC section below.
To specify the desired DEC deployment address:
- In Sitefinity CMS backend, navigate to Administration » Settings » Advanced» DigitalExperienceCloudConnector.
- Under API Server URL, enter one of the following URLs, depending on which DEC deployment you want to use:
- https://api.dec.sitefinity.com
DEC deployment, hosted in the US
- https://nl-api.dec.sitefinity.com
DEC deployment, hosted in the Netherlands, EU
- Save your changes.
Connect to DEC
Once you configure the desired DEC deployment address you must proceed by connecting to Digital Experience Cloud by providing your DEC credentials. To connect:
- Navigate to Administration » Connector for Digital Experience Cloud.
- Enter your access key.
For more information about generating an access key, see Connect your sites to DEC.
NOTE: To generate an access key, you need to be a DEC Account administrator.
- Click Connect.
You can now define which sites to track and in which data center(s) to collect visitor data.
NOTE: By default, Sitefinity CMS-tracked data is labeled as Website. In Digital Experience Cloud, you can see all data sources reporting to your data center in the data center's Data integration tab page. You can modify the connection name and thus the label of the Sitefinity data source by navigating in Sitefinity to Administration » Settings » Advanced settings » DigitalExperienceCloudConnector and editing the value in the Connection name field.
Troubleshoot connection issues
In case you lose connection between Sitefinity CMS and DEC, to troubleshoot the problem, make sure you investigate the following potential issues.
| Issue |
Troubleshooting |
| Digital Experience Cloud server is down |
This is a temporary issue. May be caused by network issues, services down, and others. |
| Firewall not properly configured |
Login to your server to validate the connectivity to DEC.
You must modify your system’s firewall settings. Make sure the outbound internet connectivity of the Sitefinity CMS server is not restricted for the following addresses:
- https://api.dec.sitefinity.com with IP: 23.101.166.71 for TCP connections on 443 port
This is the service of the DEC API server that is responsible for collecting all behavior data of visitors. The Sitefinity CMS server uses this service to initiate the data collection process and to power A/B testing and personalization by persona, lead scoring, and campaigns. In case the Sitefinity CMS server cannot reach this service, Sitefinity CMS will not be able to leverage DEC features and collect data.
- https://dec.azureedge.net for TCP connections on 443 port
This is the CDN that distributes the DEC Insights dashboard, accessible from the Marketing dropdown menu of the Sitefinity CMS administration UI. As this is content delivery network, there is no single IP range for it, so you can instead setup the firewall based on the DNS record. In case you do not have the DNS record, all DEC features will function normally in Sitefinity CMS, apart from the Insights dashboard.
In addition, make sure that the access to the DEC deployment URLs is not restricted:
- https://api.dec.sitefinity.com
DEC deployment, hosted in the US
- https://nl-api.dec.sitefinity.com
DEC deployment, hosted in the Netherlands, EU
|
| Access key deactivated |
Generate a new access key to restore the connection. For more information, see Access keys.
NOTE: Make sure the access key grants permissions to the same data centers as the deactivated key.
|
| Config files issues between environments |
In case you are working in multiple environments and each environment has different DEC configuration, verify that the proper configuration is in place. In addition, verify that the DEC API key matches the proper user credentials. |
| DEC license expired |
Contact sitefinitysales@progress.com |
| Data center issues |
To check whether the data center is deleted from DEC, try to reconnect via the DEC connector. If the data center is not deleted, it is displayed in the Data centers dropdown menu as an option you can choose.
NOTE: Another reason for not seeing the data center in the Data centers dropdown is that you are not logged in with the proper user that has permissions to work with this data center.
|
In case you do not find your issue listed in the table above, you can examine the Sitefinity CMS error logs.
Track specific sites in multisite environment
In case you are working with multiple websites on one Sitefinity CMS instance, you can select which specific Sitefinity CMS site(s) to track. For example, you may want to exclude from your data a subset of sites that are not relevant to your marketing department and their data can dilute the results from the other sites you want to track. In addition, you can isolate customer journey data for individual websites powered by a single Sitefinity CMS instance in specific data centers in Digital Experience Cloud. Thus, digital marketers can get data-driven insights that are specific to the brand or website they manage.
By default, all Sitefinity CMS sites in multisite environment are tracked. To select one or more specific sites to track and in which data center to store site data:
- Navigate to Administration » Connectivity » Digital Experience Cloud.
- Once you connect to Digital Experience Cloud, under Tracking, click Add tracking.
- From the Digital Experience Cloud data centers dropdown, select a data center.
- Select the checkboxes of all sites whose data you want to store in the data center you selected.
NOTE: Once you associate a site with a data center, you cannot associate it with another data center. You can, however, associate more than one site with one and the same data center.
- In the Tracked activities tab page, under Track all activities for..., click Change.
- Choose Selected sites and mark the checkbox nest to the sites you need to track and collect data from.
Once you are done, the selected sites automatically start sending data to Progress Sitefinity Digital Experience Cloud.
Track Sitefinity CMS website sub-domains
To track Sitefinity CMS websites and their sub-domains, you configure the tracking cookie sf-data-intell-subject to be visible to all relevant applications:
- Navigate to Administration » Advanced settings » DigitalExperienceCloudConnector.
- Set the Tracking cookie domain setting to .sitefinity.com.
As a result, the cookie is visible to all systems hosted on sub-domains, for example sitefinity.com and partners.sitefinity.com.