QuickGuide #15: CDF - General Purpose, Importance & Troubleshooting

Answer

Category Definition File (CDF)

The Category Definition File (CDF) is a mechanism that allows a website?s products and content to be categorized within IBM Digital Analytics? reports.

Key Detail:

• The CDF allows modification of the existing hierarchy within reports without having to update the website?s data tags and involve your IT Development team. As a result this allows you to avoid additional time and costs.

• Please note that any changes to the CDF will only apply to the reporting going forwards from the point of change. However data can be reprocessed for 14 days in the past by submitting a ticket to our technical team (via the IBM Support Portal)

• The CDF associates the Category IDs sent inside data tags to a category hierarchy structure that is then displayed within your reports. Every Category ID sent through the data tags needs a corresponding line within the CDF otherwise you will see ?No Category Assigned? appear within your reports (please see the ?Troubleshooting? section of this guide for more information).

• The CDF itself is a comma separated values file (i.e. a ?.csv? file formatted file) and contains the following 4 fields (in separate columns): The IBM Digital Analytics Client ID Category ID Category Name and Parent Category ID

• Please note that Parent Category IDs will need to have a line in the CDF as well. For top-level categories the Parent Category ID should be empty.

• The category hierarchy tree structure defined within this file is what will be seen within the IBM Digital Analytics reports.

Importing the CDF:

• The CDF can be uploaded:

  • manually via the Import application (image below)?

  • via FTP to the default import location for that Analytics Client ID which allows for automation in relation to category changes.

• Following either of these upload methods the CDF will be processed and data will appear in the reports

• The imported CDF file will go through a validation phase before it is loaded into IBM Digital Analytics. Data is typically loaded within a few hours but you will only see the new CDF?s structure appear in your reports the following morning (once data has been processed overnight against it).

Troubleshooting:

• Page Categories and Product Categories reports within IBM Digital Analytics are based on the categories provided via the CDF.

• When viewing the report if you see a ?No Category Assigned? row then it indicates a problem with either the CDF or the Page View (for Page Categories report) or Product View (for Product Categories report) tags used on the website.

• Pages/Products are listed (in their respective reports) with their top-level category set to ?No Category Assigned? but with a lower level showing a valid category if the IBM Digital Analytics application receives category information from a Product View tag but the ?Category ID? is not present within the CDF.

• ?Pages/Products are listed (in their respective reports) with their sub-category also set to ?No Category Assigned? (i.e. ?No Category Assigned? > ?No Category Assigned?) when the products do not send ?Category ID? information within the Product View tag.