This guide provides answers to questions that are often asked about the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK.
Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK is a client-side JavaScript library that allows you to interact with the various services in Adobe Experience Cloud.
The Web SDK sends data in a solution-agnostic way (XDM) to the Experience Platform Edge Network, which then maps the data to solution-specific formats and destinations and sends it in real time.
See the following video for more information about the Web SDK: Meet Alloy.js and Never Tag for an eVar or Mbox Again.
Currently, you have to deploy different JavaScript libraries based on each individual solution.
Although tags in Platform make it as easy as possible to deploy and manage these libraries, there are still issues with:
Also, there is currently no JavaScript library that sends data directly to Adobe Experience Platform.
The new Web SDK sends data for the following solutions to a single destination (Experience Platform Edge Network) and solves for the most common aforementioned solution use cases.
Other solutions will follow.
Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK can also send data directly to Adobe Experience Platform. This data is in XDM format and is mapped to the server-side solution schema.
Performance: The web SDK is smaller than using all of the current Adobe libraries and provides significantly faster page loads.
Simplicity: The combination of XDM, Web SDK, tags, Edge Network, Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, and Adobe Experience Platform creates an easy-to-understand and simple-to-follow data collection story.
Control: Because all of the data is using a single and connected stream of data, you can logically follow and control what the data looks like at every millisecond of its journey, to and from applications.
Modern and ready for the future: The Web SDK and its connection to the Edge Network has enabled Adobe to significantly modernize how Adobe deals with data collection, personalization, consent and the future of 3rd party cookies. (It enables a first party domain, managed by Adobe.)
Time-to-value: Adobe has worked hard (and will continue) to make it as easy as possible to deploy the Web SDK via tags and map client-side data to XDM. After that work is done, all other Adobe solutions and Adobe Experience Platform services can be turned on or off server-side. For example, if you are using this for Adobe Analytics and you want to turn on Target or Experience Platform, you can simply flip a toggle on the Datastream configuration and light up those use cases.
alloy.js is the name of the Web SDK JavaScript library. It is referenced within the SDK source code and filename.
No. Any Adobe Digital Experience customer can use the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK free of charge. Customers who wish to use the Web SDK will need to configure the right permissions to create schemas, datasets, identity namespaces, and datastreams in the Data Collection UI or Experience Platform UI.
For more information on configuring these permissions see our documentation on data collection permissions management.
Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK has been developed for the following customers:
Adobe Experience Platform users
Adobe Experience Cloud solution customers
The Web SDK is currently available to the general public and can be used to send data to Adobe Experience Cloud products. The ability to send data to third-party solutions is coming in the near future.
There is no charge for the SDK, and it is hosted by Adobe for free. If required, you can download it and host it on your own servers at no cost.
The Web SDK requires access to datastream configurations and the Experience Platform XDM schema builder, in order for Adobe’s servers to properly handle inbound data coming from the SDK. If you would like to get access, contact your Adobe account team to start the request process.
The Web SDK is quickly evolving. More use cases are being worked on. You can find the list of use cases currently supported here.
It depends. Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK can be deployed in two different styles. A future migration document will provide additional details.
Just another tag: If the site is already tagged for solutions and you can’t retag, but you want to send data to Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network for Experience Platform use cases or the upcoming event forwarding features (see below), you can add the alloy.js
tag to the site, where it works as “just another tag.”
The one and only tag: If you want to use the Web SDK for an Experience Cloud solution, you must use it for all of the solutions on that page. For example, if your site is already tagged for Adobe Analytics and you want to use it for Target, you need to use it for both, as well as for any others in the future.
In other words, if you decide to use Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK for non-solution use cases, you can tag the site with alloy.js
and move on as if it’s a new solution. If you want to use it for Adobe Analytics, Target, or Audience Manager, or for application use cases, you might have to remove any of the legacy code on your page.
Yes, Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK provides an Identity Migration feature. Follow the instructions for ID migration in the Platform Web SDK identity documentation for more details.
Tags in Experience Platform manage the device code. Use them to more easily deploy the code. They are free and powerful.
Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK is the official name of the new code that would be deployed by tags for Adobe use cases. It is also free and powerful.
alloy.js
is the file name of the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK code.
No. You can download the alloy.js
file yourself.
However:
Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK requires something called a Datastream ID so the edge network can identify the stream and determine what to do with the data. This ID is created within Experience Platform. This doesn’t mean you have to use the UI to create properties or deploy the JavaScript code, but you do need to use tags to create a configuration ID.
Tags are not only the best available tag and SDK manager, it makes it very easy to deploy alloy.js
and map data to XDM schemas. If you decide not to use tags, you will have to manage deploying alloy.js
, eventing, and mapping your data into XDM before sending it. This is a much more difficult process than using tags.
It is recommended that you use tags to deploy alloy.js
, even if it’s the only tag you use it for.
If you use our SDKs and send XDM to the Edge Network, these new features event forwarding allows you to install new server-side extensions and map that data to anything–and send it anywhere–from our edge network. Think of it as “data collection as a service”. This will be available for a cost, as well as being bundled as part of Adobe Experience Platform.
More information about a CNAME is available in the Adobe documentation
Yes, currently the Web SDK uses anywhere between one to seven cookies depending on your implementation. Below is a list of the cookies that you might see with the Web SDK and the way that they are used:
Name | maxAge | Friendly age | Description |
---|---|---|---|
kndct_orgid_identity | 34128000 | 395 days | The identity cookie stores the ECID, as well as other information related to the ECID. |
kndctr_orgid_consent_check | 7200 | 2 hours | This session-based cookie signals the server to look up the consent preferences server side. |
kndctr_orgid_consent | 15552000 | 180 days | This cookie stores the user’s consent preference for the website. |
kndctr_orgid_cluster | 1800 | 30 minutes | This cookie stores the Edge Network region that is serving the current user’s requests. The region is used in the URL path so that the Edge Network can route the request to the correct region. This cookie has a 30 minutes lifetime, so that if a user connects with a different IP address, the request can be routed to the closest region. |
mbox | 63072000 | 2 years | This cookie appears when the Target migration setting is set to true. This will allow the Target mbox cookie to be set by the Web SDK. |
mboxEdgeCluster | 1800 | 30 minutes | This cookie appears when the Target migration setting is set to true. This cookie allows the Web SDK to communicate the correct edge cluster to at.js so that Target profiles can stay in sync as users navigate across a site. |
AMCV_###@AdobeOrg | 34128000 | 395 days | This cookie only appears when ID migration on the Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK is enabled. This cookie helps when transitioning to Web SDK while some parts of the site are still using visitor.js. See idMigrationEnabled for more information. |
When using the Web SDK, the Edge Network sets one or more of the cookies above. The Edge Network sets all the cookies with the secure
and sameSite="none"
attributes.
If you currently have both secure and non-secure sections on your website, this could interfere with user identification. When a user navigates from a secure section of the site to a non-secure section, the Edge Network generates a new ECID
with the request.
The Adobe Experience Platform Web SDK is designed to work optimally in the latest versions of Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge Chromium. You may have trouble using certain features on older versions of browsers or deprecated browsers, such as Internet Explorer.