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An anonymous user is someone who visits your portal without logging in. Working with anonymous users can be limiting because you have less information about them. However, you can use tracking tools to find out more about these users, such as the date and time they visit and information in the request or session.
Anonymous User Tracking can help you present personalized content to an anonymous user over multiple sessions. For example, you can set up Visitor Entitlement, Delegated Administration, and some types of Personalization based on that information. Anonymous User Tracking gives anonymous users records in a database, where you can store meaningful information about them, such as personal preferences.
Developers use Workshop for WebLogic to programmatically set up Anonymous User Tracking. You cannot use the Administration Console to set up Anonymous User Tracking.
| Note: | Campaigns and Behavior Tracking are not currently supported for anonymous, non-trackable users. |
This chapter includes the following sections:
WebLogic Portal lets you identify and retain information about non-authenticated visitors to your portals. When you enable Anonymous User Tracking, non-authenticated users receive a cookie after a predetermined time (the default is 30 seconds), and preference information is persisted in a database rather than in memory.
Each time an anonymous tracked user returns to your portal, the ID in the cookie matches the primary key in the tracked anonymous user database, the previous user properties are maintained, and your Personalization and Campaign rules work for this user. When an anonymous tracked user registers in your portal, the User Profile is moved from the anonymous tracked user database to the user database.
If users do not have cookies enabled or if they delete cookies frequently, there is no way to match the users with their existing records in the anonymous tracked user database, and on subsequent returns to the portal these users are treated as new anonymous users.
Anonymous User Tracking can be customized to exclude users who spend less than a designated period of time on your site, avoiding the expense of storing data on irrelevant users.
This section includes the following topic:
WebLogic Portal supports the following types of user tracking profiles:
ProfileWrapper is not yet created.
You must configure Anonymous User Tracking by editing the web.xml file in your web application directory in Workshop for WebLogic. You will enable cookies on the user's browser in order to track anonymous users. You must also enable Anonymous User Tracking for your portal, because the tracking is not enabled by default.
When you configure Anonymous User Tracking, you perform the following tasks:
Perform the following steps to edit the web.xml file to enable Anonymous User Tracking:
web.xml file, which is typically located in the /WEB-INF/ directory in your web application.web.xml file to open it. You can also edit the web.xml file in a text editor.PortalServletFilter section, which begins with the following code sample:<filter-name> PortalServletFilter </filter-name>
<filter-class> com.bea.p13n.servlets.PortalServletFilter
</filter-class>
fireSessionLoginEvent parameter value to false, as shown in the following code sample:<init-param>
<param-name>fireSessionLoginEvent</param-name>
<param-value>false</param-value>
<description> Option to fire SessionLoginEvent, defaults to false
if not set</description>
</init-param>
createAnonymousProfile parameter value to true, as shown in the following code sample. <init-param>
<param-name>createAnonymousProfile</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
<description> Filter will create an anonymous profile for every
session. Defaults to true if not set</description>
</init-param>
The default is true. To disable the creation of anonymous User Profiles, set the value to false. If the enableTrackedAnonymous parameter is set to true, the createAnonymousProfile parameter is ignored.
| Note: | The createAnonymousProfile parameter does not enable anonymous user tracking from one session to the next without registering; this would require the enableTrackedAnonymous value to be changed to true. If a user visits your site and then registers within the same session, any data collected on that user is persisted in the account of that registered user. |
enableTrackedAnonymous parameter value to true, as shown in the following code sample:<init-param>
<param-name>enableTrackedAnonymous</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
<description> Option to track anonymous users, defaults to false if
not set. 'createAnonymousProfile' is ignored if this is true
</description>
</init-param>
trackedAnonymousVisitDuration parameter value to the number of seconds before tracking begins. The following code sample shows that tracking is configured to begin after five seconds:<init-param>
<param-name>trackedAnonymousVisitDuration</param-name>
<param-value>5</param-value>
<description> Length in seconds visitor must be on site before we start
tracking them. Defaults to 60 seconds if not set</description>
</init-param>
web.xml file.| Tip: | Tracking anonymous users can potentially generate a large amount of data. You might want to develop a strategy to remove old data. For example, you could delete entries from the database that are older than two months. If a tracked anonymous user is converted to a registered user, you could remove the tracked anonymous user EJB and its associated property set EJBs from the database. |
You can target anonymous non-tracked users with personalized content using a personalization tool, such as default (non-Campaign) Placeholders and Content Selectors. Campaigns and Behavior Tracking are not currently supported for anonymous, non-tracked users.
| Tip: | Campaigns and Behavior Tracking are not officially supported for anonymous users that have not logged in, but your BEA Professional Services representative can help you create a Campaign that displays personalized content for this type of visitor. |
The difference between completely anonymous non-tracked users and registered or anonymous tracked users is how long their profile information is retained.
For example, if an anonymous user visits a portal and sets preferences to favorite color=purple and favorite hobby=reading, those values are persisted in memory and can be used to display personalized content and trigger Campaigns while the browser session lasts. However, if the user closes the browser and revisits the portal, the user preferences must be re-entered. Registered and anonymous tracked user preferences are saved in a database.
While anonymous users might not retain a consistent store of user preferences from session to session, you can still provide some Interaction Management functionality. Many Personalization conditions are based on generic HTTP session and request properties that you define, dates and times, or personal session preferences that have no relationship to registered users and their profile properties. For example, you could display personalized content for anonymous users accessing your portal with a specific type of browser during a specific time frame.
See the Interaction Management Guide for instructions on setting up Placeholders and Content Selectors for anonymous non-tracked users.
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