Back in 2010, Adobe introduced Digital Pulse Debugger, a JS snippet that you could add to your Bookmark and act as your Sitecatalyst, Test & Target, AdLens and Audiomanager debugger. Effectively, an image requests that shows you via a basic interface all the variable and success events that fire once your page loads amongst other useful information such as Report Suite ID, Visitor ID etc.
Pulse became a must have extension, however it lacked the ability to show you a sequence of requests (you could do that with Charles), onclick events and variables that fire without a page load as well as possible errors with your variable settings within the admin console. For that you have to go via the network option in the development console or use 3rd party tools such as Observe point and Charles.
Digital Pulse Interface
Fastforwarding today, Adobe try to fix all that by releasing a great successor called Adobe Marketing Cloud Pulse.
Essentially, it is a debugger for the Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions including Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Media Optimizer, DTM and Adobe Marketing Cloud Visitor Service, however DTM is not currently supported. Currently available on Chrome extension library.
Download Adobe Marketing Cloud Pulse for Chrome here
Adobe Marketing Cloud Pulse Main differences from Digital Pulse Debugger
- You can see the sequence of events rather one single image request. This is pretty similar to the Google Tag Assistant Recording feature currently available for Google Analytics.
- It will show you if there are any issues with certain variables that are not enabled via Sitecatalyst interface.
- It can extract all image requests in an excel sheet. Pretty useful as this can be a great way to document certain tracking requirements if you are building a new SDR or launching a new DTM library.
How to use the Interface
Firstly, if the web site you visit has Adobe Sitecatalyst installed, the report ID will immediately appear on the interface:
By expanding the arrow you will be able to see exactly the same information you could see with Adobe pulse, however as you start navigation the site, the request will start appearing next to each other, creating a nice sequence of your props and evars. For example purposes, let’s assume a user goes to the Home page, clicks on the main CTA banner and then the next page loads.
This is what you will see on the interface:
Very quickly, you can easily see how your pathing will look like in a report on prop2, prop3 and prop4 OR that prop40 is picking up the element interaction with the page information, the element name, the position of the element and the CTA text, all that in a very easy to read sequence instead of clicking one image request after another in your development console (pic below):
If you own a Sitecatalyst property, you can link the account with pulse and get a nice extra feature where you can see variables and props that you might have missed or that not enabled in your admin interface despite being fired via DTM.
On the header of the interface you have three options. Download, Refresh RS Details and Clear Hits.
- Refresh RS Details: Always do that if you apply new settings or introduce a new variable into your implementation. Will state the obvious here, this is available only for the properties you have connected your account with.
- Clear Hits: This will clear the interface and start all over again.
- Download: This will download everything that has been tracked so far in Excel.It will look like the image below:
All in all, Adobe Marketing Cloud Pulse is not something groundbreaking considering you are already doing most of these tasks, however it is very convenient, definitely an upgrade of the current debugger and above all a free extension.
Happy debugging.
