Migrate from tracking server to report-suite-level server-side forwarding migrating-from-tracking-server-to-report-suite-level-server-side-forwarding

This article and video will show you how to enable server-side forwarding of Analytics Data to Audience Manager at a report suite level instead of at a tracking server level.

Introduction introduction

If you have Adobe Audience Manager AND Adobe Analytics, you can implement server-side forwarding of the Analytics data to Audience Manager. This means that, instead of your page sending two hits (one to Analytics and one to Audience Manager), it can send a hit to Analytics, and Analytics will forward that data to Audience Manager.

If you already have this up and running, and if you had it enabled/implemented before October 2017, your server-side forwarding might be based on your Tracking Server, which had to be enabled by Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting. As of October 2017, you can now configure server-side forwarding yourself, and do it at a report-suite-level (forwarding per report suite). There are significant benefits to this, which is discussed below.

Tracking server forwarding tracking-server-forwarding

Your tracking server is the location to which you are sending your Analytics data, and also the domain at which the image request and cookie is written. It should be set in DTM or Experience Platform Launch, or in the AppMeasurement.js file, and will typically look like this, with your site or business name replacing “mysite”:

s.trackingServer = "mysite.sc.omtrdc.net";

If server-side forwarding is set up to forward at the tracking server level, any hit that is being sent to this tracking server (IF the Experience Cloud ID Service is also enabled) will be forwarded to Audience Manager. This had to be enabled by Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting. They are also the ones who can disable it, AFTER you have switched over to report suite forwarding, as described below.

If you are unsure if tracking server forwarding is enabled for you, contact Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting, and they should be able to let you know.

Report-suite-Level server-side forwarding report-suite-level-server-side-forwarding

One of the biggest benefits to moving to report suite forwarding from tracking server forwarding is that you will now be able to use “Audience Analytics”, which is the ability to forward Audience Manager segments back into Adobe Analytics for detailed segment analysis. This great feature is NOT supported if you are still on tracking server forwarding and not report suite forwarding. See more information about Audience Analytics in the documentation.

Important tip additional-resources

As stated in the video above, once you have all of the report suites set to forward that you want to forward to Audience Manager, you should contact Adobe Customer Care or Adobe Consulting and have them disable the tracking server forwarding. It is not an emergency for you to do this, because having both tracking server forwarding and report suite forwarding doe not result in duplicate hits. However, it is best practice to only have report suite forwarding on.

If you leave tracking server forwarding on, not only might it forward data from report suites that you do not want forwarded, but in the future, after you (and everyone at your company) has forgotten that tracking server forwarding is on, you might think that data is not forwarding for a specific report suite. This is because it is not turned on at the report suite level, but the data is still being forwarded anyway because of the tracking server. Then you will waste time and money figuring out why it is forwarding and also paying for AAM server calls that you didn’t expect. So, it’s a good idea to disable tracking server forwarding as soon as you have all the report suites set to forward that make sense for your business needs.