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How the platform works

Commanders Act is a cookieless platform that allows you to collect, normalize/fix, enrich, check and send in real time your first-party customer data.

Basically, the platform libraries/API (Source) collects user actions (Event) on your website/app/etc. These events are sent to the platform servers and are then (in this order) fixed, normalized, enriched, checked, filtered and translated in each tool (Destination) format, so that they can be sent to your chosen destinations.

Platform servers can also store events, users and custom data in the Commanders Act database (Data store) and send this data to your storage system (by FTP, email, S3, ...), BI system, etc. The user storage is based on a realtime identity resolution system that give you a cross-device single view of your users (profiles), allowing you to build segments and use audience-based destination.

Event

An represents an action made by a user on your website or application. To track that action, you send an event that contains the data and will be received by Commanders Act.

Source

A is an emitter of events. It can represents your website, your mobile app, a point of sale (POS) etc. Defining your sources allow you to easily manage and monitor where your events are coming from. See more on:

Destination

are the partners/tools where you eventually want the collected data to go. Commanders Act provide a library of many destinations ready to be used, like GA4, Facebook CAPI or Google Enhanced Conversion. See our .

Data store

Data store is the name of Commanders Act BigData database. You can store here your events and your (product catalog, etc.) Storing data inside the Data store allows you then to your events by retrieving additional data in any storage universe. It also allows you to create user and to benefit from analysis and insights.

Data layer

A data layer is a specification of your data for tracking customer interactions. This can include data from websites, mobile apps, connected devices, and offline sources. The data layer enables your third-party vendor solutions and serves as the basis for your data-focused initiatives.

event
source
Integrating your data
Sources Catalog
Destinations
destination catalog here
imported data
enrich
segments
https://github.com/TagCommander/PlatformX/blob/master/getting-started/concepts/broken-reference/README.md

Condensed platform concepts

CAX Platform : Features and Functions

Commanders Act: Cookieless platform for first-party customer data collection, normalization, enrichment, and real-time transmission.

Components:

  • Source: Libraries/APIs collect user actions (events) from various platforms (websites, apps, POS).

  • Event: User actions tracked from sources and sent to CAX.

  • Destination: Tools/partners receiving the collected data in suitable format. Examples include GA4, Facebook CAPI, Google Enhanced Conversion.

  • Data store: Commanders Act's BigData database for storing events and imported data. Enables event or user enrichment, user segmentation, and data analysis.

  • Identity resolution

  • Data Insights : Campaign analysis, Automatic Ads budget optimisation (Adloop), Customer analytics, Control group

Data Integration:

  • Real-time tracking: Via OneTag, Javascript SDK, Google Tag Manager, Mobile SDKs, Rest API.

  • Third-party tools: Connectors catalog, destination builder, webhook.

  • Imports: Regular automated file imports (csv) for CRM users, offline conversions, product catalog, custom storage universe.

  • Data API: Specific data transmission via Data JSON APIs.

Data Quality:

  • Confidence: In-app reporting and daily email digests for invalid event action.

  • Normalized Datalayer UI: Interface for data schema definition and validation rule creation (event specs).

  • QA automation: Event specification writing for QA process automation and real-time alert definition.

  • Data Cleansing UI : Live data transformation feature for quick data error response.

OneTag

  1. Add OneTag from tag library in web container. Options: Builder (no code) and Custom (manual code).

  2. Setup tag. Use cact('trigger') to record user actions. Format: cact('trigger', '<event_name>', {<event_data>}, [config], [callback]);. Events have names, properties. Example:

  3. Event types: standard (recommended, predefined names, parameters) and custom (user-defined). Use standard properties in custom events.

Event Delivery UI: Quality check for data transmission and event delivery history view.

  • Event Inspector UI: Source and destination inspectors for specific event analysis/QA/debug

  • User consent automatically included in all events with Commanders Act CMP. With other CMP, manually add consent_categories inside user.
  • Override default parameters (collectionDomain, sourceKey, siteId) if needed. Set globally for all events with cact('config').

  • Check functionality with Event Inspector.

  • Setup first destination. Add in Commanders Act platform, configure, choose source, manage user consent, save, check.

  • Server-side consent management: event sent to destination only if match between user consent categories and destination consent category.

  • cact('trigger','sign_up', {
      method: 'email', 
      user: {
          consent_categories: [1,3,4,6]
      }
    });

    Glossary

    Our market and solution use many technical concepts, but our goal is also to democratize and explicate these notions to all.

    Cookie first

    A first-party cookie is a cookie managed by the website owner to track users' activities and remember preferences. It is opposed to third-party cookies which are not owned by the website but partners (advertising partners, for example). Ad blockers and browsers are blocking more and more third-party cookies, that's why first-party cookie is a great workaround to keep a continuity on tracking users.

    A-record

    It indicates the IP address of a given domain. 'A' for address, it is the most fundamental DNS record type (Domain Name System = website domain). By adding Commanders Act on your A-record, it allows Commanders Act to launch tags as first-party cookies, avoiding ad blockers and limitations regarding third-party cookies.

    Cookie client-side

    A client-side cookie (HTTP cookie, browser cookie) is a small piece of data that a server sends to a user's web browser. These cookies are stored on the browser.

    Cookie server-side

    A server-side cookie (session) is a unique Session Identifier stored on the browser and cookie information are stored on the server. The Session Identifier is used to match the request with the data stored on the server.

    ITP

    Intelligent Tracking Prevention is a feature on browser Safari (Apple) to restrict the use of cookies to track consumers.

    Public cloud

    With public cloud, companies don't have to purchase, manage and maintain heavy and expensive infrastructures. All of this is managed by third-party providers, and companies only pay for what they consume.

    ETL capabilities

    An ETL (Extract - Transform - Load) is a system that can extract the data from a source, transform the data (normalization, cleaning...) and load, insert the data to a destination.

    Normalized data layer

    A normalized data layer refers to ready-to-use data: after collection and normalization, the data quality is ensured, data is clean and ready to be sent to destinations.

    Augmented data layer

    From collected data, it is possible to enrich the data layer with computed data: create new properties from existing properties to create a sum, count, average, ratio... This allows to create high value properties to send to destinations for a better segmentation or personalization. For example, it is possible to count the total value of purchases per user or the average basket value per user.

    Enrichment

    When an event is collected, it is possible to enrich it from stored data to add more information on the event before to send it to destinations. For example, a purchase event can be enriched with data coming from CRM, like hashed email address or any other relevant information. It can also be enriched with information coming from the product catalog, from the product ID we can add product details, color, weight, materials...

    Identity resolution

    The goal of Identity resolution is to create a unified customer profile, whatever devices (desktop, mobile) or channels used (online and offline). To achieve this goal, we built a real-time proprietary reconciliation algorithm to create the complete view of customers.