Passive verses Active Slots
You use a passive slot when you want the interactions (actions, clicks, behaviors) in the UI to drive content. For example, if you want the agent’s behavior in the UI, such as performing a search, to determine content you use a passive slot.
You use an active slot when you want the slot itself to call for content based upon the current state of the application. For example, if you wish to fill the slot via the slot’s own request for content based upon the current state of the application, such as the agent’s profile attributes, use an active slot.
Persistence
Persistence should be used for passive slots and should not be used for active slots. A persistent slot stores information about the slot in the profile repository so that its contents can be displayed to a visitor across multiple sessions. Persistence is often used with product promotions.
Request-Scoped verses Session-Scoped
An active slot should always be paired with a request-scoped setting. This ensures that it always requests new content depending on current state. If the slot is session-scoped the content could get stale, especially if the scenario is driven by a dynamically changing profile attribute. In this case a session-scoped slot only requests new content at the start of a user session and does not refresh even if the user profile state changes, leading to stale content.
You may have performance concerns with always using request-scoped slots, so you will have to determine what kind of content it is you want to render and when and whether it is acceptable to use a session-scoped slot. You have to weigh the tradeoff of the possible performance concerns when using a request-scoped slot verses the potential for stale content when using a session-scoped slot.
Using Globally-Scoped Slots
In general, it is not recommended that you use globally-scoped slots because offer management is centered on delivering different content to different people at different times. The only time you would use a globally-scoped slot is if you wanted to show the same content to everyone all the time. An example of this might be dynamic content (announcements, images) that is viewable by all agents.
Item Retrieval Methods
Of the three item retrieval methods, you should most often be using static. The destructive item retrieval does not make sense with a request-scoped slot (recommended); therefore it is not recommended to use destructive. Rotating item retrieval will not work well with the way the renderer wrappers are designed. The renderer wrappers control the iteration of the content. A rotating slot would interfere in this process. When using passive, persistent slots with static item retrieval (as in the Passive configuration above), you may want to add an action to your scenario that removes all current items before adding new ones. Otherwise the new items may not override the current items.
