Get started with Experience Cloud services

If you recently implemented Experience Cloud using Experience Platform tags, you’re already set up for Customer Attributes and Experience Cloud Audiences. You can also manage users and products in the Admin Console.

Existing customers can modernize their application implementations and implement Experience Cloud. Doing so enables you to use Customer Attributes and audience features across Adobe Analytics, Audience Manager, and Adobe Target.

Join the Experience Cloud and become an administrator

What you must do to join Experience Cloud:

1. Ensure that you have the appropriate Adobe Analytics or Adobe Target SKUs.

   • Adobe Analytics: Standard or Premium (not the legacy SiteCatalyst SKU).
   • Adobe Target: Standard or Premium.
   NOTE

   For Target, migrate to at.js from mbox.js. See Upgrading from at.js 1. x to at.js 2. x.

2. Manage users and products in the Admin Console.

Administrator login

After you are an administrator, you can log in at experience.adobe.com.

The Admin Console link is available in Experience Cloud menu navigation.

User login

To log in to Experience Cloud, your users must:

• Have an Adobe ID (or Enterprise ID for your company).
• Sign in at experience.adobe.com.
• Belong to an application group that is mapped to an enterprise group.
• If necessary, link their application accounts to their Adobe ID (described below).

Optional: Link existing user accounts.

Most likely, you have users who are already members of application groups, such an Analytics group that you previously managed in Analytics > Admin Tools.

When you map these groups to Experience Cloud enterprise groups, those users must manually link their application account credentials to their Adobe ID.

See Link accounts in Experience Cloud

The following sections describe how to modernize your implementation. Modernizing your implementation enables core services in Experience Cloud.

Implement the Experience Cloud ID Service

The Experience Cloud ID Service provides a common ID for cross-application integration. It provides cross-domain visitor identification and a path for cross-device/browser targeting and personalization based on CRM data uploaded via Customer Attributes.

The simplest method for enabling Experience Cloud core services is to activate it automatically for Analytics and Adobe Target via the Experience Cloud ID Service extension in Experience Platform Launch.

For complete Experience Cloud ID Service help (formerly, visitor ID), go here.

Not Using Experience Platform tags?

If you are not using Experience Platform tags, manually implement the ID service via the JavaScript Deployment (VisitorAPI.js), as follows:

Analytics & Adobe Target - synching the customer ID

As a part of setting up the Experience Cloud ID Service, Adobe recommends for Analytics and Target that you synchronize your customer IDs with the Experience Cloud.

In Adobe Target, the mbox3rdpartyid must get the customer ID and send it to Target. (See Working with Customer Attributes in Target.)

When a visitor authenticates on your website, or otherwise identifies themselves, your implementation must expose that person’s CRM customer ID to the page or app. Then you can use the appropriate function call to synchronize your customer ID to Experience Cloud. This synchronization stores the visitor’s CRM customer ID in Experience Cloud, and activates that customer’s attributes for use in Experience Cloud.

For example, assume that Bob has Customer ID 52mc210tr42 in your CRM system. When Bob authenticates on your site, you must expose this ID on the page, and use the ID to synchronize it by one of two means:

• Call visitor.setCustomerIDs({"crm_id":"52mc210tr42"}) using the Visitor ID service. Or,
• Populate the Customer ID (52mc210tr42) in a prop or eVar.

The Customer ID must be set on each Analytics server call where the Customer ID is known.

Analytics: synching the customer ID with the Data Warehouse backfill method

When Customer Attributes first became available, some customers had not yet implemented the Experience Cloud ID service and could not easily utilize Customer Attributes. To help alleviate this problem, Adobe created a means to do a backfill of ID syncs using the Adobe Analytics Data Warehouse. This feature is known as the Data Warehouse backfill. The Data Warehouse backfill is now generally not necessary and as a result will no longer be available starting in October 2022.

Mobile SDKs

See the Experience Cloud ID Service section for syntax examples about how to set additional customer IDs in Android™ and iOS Mobile applications.

Enabling Attributes for Historical Data

Customer attribute data is made available after visitors log in. If you have not yet implemented the ID Service, and if you have historically been tracking customer IDs in a prop or eVar, you can request a process that sends historical logins to Experience Cloud. This process lets you begin using Customer Attributes immediately.

Contact Customer Care to enable historical data.

Map report suites to an Experience Cloud Organization

Experience Cloud services (such as Experience Cloud ID Service and the People service) are associated with an Experience Cloud organization instead of an individual Analytics report suite. To ensure that these services operate correctly, each Analytics report suite must be mapped to an Experience Cloud organization.

Update your Analytics AppMeasurement code

If you are using first-party cookies, refer to CNAME and the Experience Cloud ID Service for information about data collection CNAMEs and cross-domain tracking.

It is recommended that you modernize your Analytics implementation by updating your JavaScript libraries, including the Visitor API. The simple way to accomplish is to add an Adobe Analytics extension in Experience Platform Data Collection.

Update your Adobe Target implementation

• It is recommended that you add an Adobe Target extension in Experience Platform tags, so that your library retrieval is automatic. You can also set up the Experience Cloud ID Service extension for Adobe Target (and other applications) using Experience Platform tags. The Experience Cloud ID Service update is required for Adobe Target to use the People services.

• If you are not using Experience Platform tags, update your mbox library manually.

• Request access to use Adobe Analytics as the reporting source for Adobe Target. Target and Analytics data are combined on the same server call during processing so that visitors are connected between the two applications. See Analytics for Target Implementation.

  IMPORTANT

  All Analytics customers are already provisioned for core services like Customer Attributes. If you are not an Analytics customer, contact Customer Care to request to be provisioned.

Verify the implementation

Use the following process to ensure that Experience Cloud ID Service is implemented correctly on your site.

1. Clear cookies for your site so you can see the request to the Experience Cloud ID Service (the request happens on the first visit, then once per visitor per week).
2. Using a packet analyzer or the network panel in a web browser debugger, look for a request going to dpm.demdex.net.
3. Verify that the response contains d_mid and a value, for example: _setMarketingCloudFields({"d_mid":"4235...
4. Verify that the Analytics request contains the mid parameter (the Experience Cloud ID). During the grace period (if it is enabled), you should also see an aid parameter (the Analytics visitor ID).

Expected response containing the Experience Cloud ID:

Analytics image request containing the Experience Cloud ID (also known as mid or visitor ID):

Experience Cloud ID in the mbox request:

What Is the Grace Period?

After you deploy the Experience Cloud ID Service, new visitors no longer receive an Analytics Experience Cloud ID from your data collection server. If sections of your site have not yet implemented the ID Service, when visitors browse to these sections, the Experience Cloud ID is not recognized and visitors are assigned a legacy Analytics visitor ID. This can cause potential problems, including duplicate visits and incorrect attribution.

For example, if the support section of your site is managed in a separate CMS, you might have a different Analytics JavaScript file for this section. If you deploy the Experience Cloud ID on your main site before you deploy the ID service to the support site, new visitors receive a legacy Analytics ID when they visit the support section. Visits that span both site sections are reported as different visits.

Deploying the Experience Cloud ID Service on sites that are using multiple JavaScript files or other technologies (such as Flash) can cause coordination issues. These issues occur because you must enable the Experience Cloud ID Service on all portions of your site at the same time. By configuring a grace period, new visitors to continue to receive an Analytics visitor ID from the ID service. Visitors can be consistently identified on sections of your site that have not been upgraded to use the visitor ID service.

Manage users and products

Once you are up and running, navigate to the Admin Console, where you can manage users and product profiles.

Customer Attributes

Users that are added to the Customer Attributes group can see the Customer Attributes menu item on the left side of Experience Cloud.

Begin sharing attribute and audience data

Take advantage of the following features.

People > Customer Attributes

If you capture enterprise customer data in a customer relationship management (CRM) database, you can upload the data into a Customer Attribute data source in Experience Cloud. Once uploaded, use the data in Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.

See Customer Attributes fore more information.

People > Audience Library

Experience Cloud Audiences is the interface that lets you create audiences, combine existing audiences to create composite audiences, and view all shared audiences.

See Audiences for more information.

Data storage and privacy disclosure

If you use real-time audience profiling and other core services within the Adobe Experience Cloud, use of these services might impact which data center (and country) your data resides. Specifically, because Experience Cloud uses Audience Manager, data used within the People service must reside within Audience Manager servers in the United States.

When using services made available via the People service, the types of data sent from other Adobe products to audience management are:

• Analytics key/value pairs (props, eVars, list vars, and so on). By default, the log lines include IP address, including the last octet of the IP (assuming that the IP address was not modified by IP obfuscation settings within Adobe Analytics).
• Traits and segments that visitors qualify for based on rules set up in Audience Manager.
• (Optional) One or more of your IDs. Depending on your implementation of the ID service, you might also be sending in one or more of your IDs, such as CRM IDs or hashed email addresses. If this data is sent into Adobe Analytics, it is transferred to Adobe audience management. Adobe recommends against providing personal data to Adobe Analytics. Rather, use a one-way hash to mask the data before it is sent to Adobe.
• Segments originating in Analytics via the back-end segment sharing capability
• The demdex.net cookie is set if third-party cookies are not blocked. The AMCV_###@AdobeOrg first-party cookie is always set with the Experience Cloud ID Service.

All these data elements are delivered to Adobe Audience Manager in the form of log files. Audience Manager processes and stores this data within the United States. Audience Manager does not provide an option to store or process this data outside of the United States.