Displaying extra data on a Sitecore 9 Goal

Goals in Sitecore 9

In our project we had goals set when a whitepaper was downloaded. This works fine, but it would be much nicer if we could show which whitepaper was actually downloaded. All the whitepapers have an identifier code, so the challenge was to add this identifier to the goal data.

Capturing custom goal data

Capturing the data is very well explained in the official documentation of Sitecore. We used the "Data" and "DataKey" properties of the goal:

• DataKey: a key that identifies the contents of  "Data" - e.g. 'Whitepaper code'
• Data : any data collected as part of triggering the event - in our case the whitepaper identifier

This all works fine and we can see the data in the database (xDB shards) as part of the events.

Displaying custom goal data

Data is nice, but you need a way to show it. It wasn't immediatly clear how to do this, so I asked it on Sitecore Stack Exchange.

Working on #Sitecore #xConnect customizations and Experience Profile goodies, resulting in a blog post on displaying contact facets https://t.co/61IDBzCV5l and a question on displaying goal data https://t.co/YMx41X2beM

— Gert Gullentops (@Gatagordo) February 5, 2018

Jarmo Jarvi pointed me in the good direction by mentioning a tremendous blog post by Jonathan Robbins. The blog post was based on Sitecore 8 - the idea behind my post here is to show the differences when doing this in Sitecore 9 and xConnect. The result will be the same:

an extra column in the goals section of the activity tab of a contact in the Experience Profile

ExperienceProfileContactViews

The ExperienceProfileContactViews pipeline is where all the magic happens. Adding the extra column to the results table is identical to the description for Sitecore 8. Fetching the data (in GetGoals) however is quite different as we have to use xConnect now:

public class AddGoalDataColumn : ReportProcessorBase
{
  public override void Process(ReportProcessorArgs args)
  {
    args.ResultTableForView?.Columns.Add(Schema.GoalData.ToColumn());
  }
}

public static class Schema
{
  public static ViewField GoalData = new ViewField("GoalData");
}

public class FillGoalData : ReportProcessorBase
{
  public override void Process(ReportProcessorArgs args)
  {
    var resultTableForView = args.ResultTableForView;
    Assert.IsNotNull(resultTableForView, "Result table for {0} could not be found.", args.ReportParameters.ViewName);
    var i = 0;
    foreach (var row in resultTableForView.AsEnumerable())
    {
      var goalData = args.QueryResult.Rows[i].ItemArray[4];
      if (goalData != null)
      {
        row[Schema.GoalData.Name] = goalData;
      }

      i++;
    }
  }
}

public class GetGoals : ReportProcessorBase
{
  public override void Process(ReportProcessorArgs args)
  {
    var goalsDataXconnect = GetGoalsDataXconnect(args.ReportParameters.ContactId);
    args.QueryResult = goalsDataXconnect;
  }

  private static DataTable GetGoalsDataXconnect(Guid contactId)
  {
    var goalsTableWithSchema = CreateGoalsTableWithSchema();
    var contactExpandOptions = new ContactExpandOptions(Array.Empty<string>())
    {
      Interactions = new RelatedInteractionsExpandOptions("WebVisit")
      {
        StartDateTime = DateTime.MinValue
      }
    };

    FillRawTable(GetContactByOptions(contactId, contactExpandOptions).Interactions.Where(p => p.Events.OfType<Goal>().Any()), goalsTableWithSchema);
    return goalsTableWithSchema;
  }

  private static DataTable CreateGoalsTableWithSchema()
  {
    var dataTable = new DataTable();
    dataTable.Columns.AddRange(new[]
    {
      new DataColumn("_id", typeof(Guid)),
      new DataColumn("ContactId", typeof(Guid)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_PageEvents_PageEventDefinitionId", typeof(Guid)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_PageEvents_DateTime", typeof(DateTime)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_PageEvents_Data", typeof(string)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_Url_Path", typeof(string)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_Url_QueryString", typeof(string)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_PageEvents_Value", typeof(int)),
      new DataColumn("Pages_Item__id", typeof(Guid)),
      new DataColumn("SiteName", typeof(string))
    });

    return dataTable;
  }

  private static void FillRawTable(IEnumerable<Interaction> goalsInteractions, DataTable rawTable)
  {
    foreach (var goalsInteraction in goalsInteractions)
    {
      foreach (var goal in goalsInteraction.Events.OfType<Goal>())
      {
        var currentEvent = goal;
        var row = rawTable.NewRow();
        row["_id"] = goalsInteraction.Id;
        row["ContactId"] = goalsInteraction.Contact.Id;
        row["Pages_PageEvents_PageEventDefinitionId"] = currentEvent.DefinitionId;
        row["Pages_PageEvents_DateTime"] = currentEvent.Timestamp;
        row["Pages_PageEvents_Data"] = currentEvent.Data;
        row["Pages_PageEvents_Value"] = currentEvent.EngagementValue;
        var dataRow = row;
        const string index = "SiteName";
        var webVisit = goalsInteraction.WebVisit();
        var str = webVisit?.SiteName ?? string.Empty;
        dataRow[index] = str;
        if (currentEvent.ParentEventId.HasValue)
        {
          if (goalsInteraction.Events.FirstOrDefault(p => p.Id == currentEvent.ParentEventId.Value) is PageViewEvent pageViewEvent)
          {
            row["Pages_Item__id"] = pageViewEvent.ItemId;
            var urlString = new UrlString(pageViewEvent.Url);
            row["Pages_Url_Path"] = urlString.Path;
            row["Pages_Url_QueryString"] = urlString.Query;
          }
        }

        rawTable.Rows.Add(row);
      }
    }
  }

  private static Contact GetContactByOptions(Guid contactId, ExpandOptions options = null)
  {
    using (var client = SitecoreXConnectClientConfiguration.GetClient())
    {
      if (options == null)
      {
        options = new ContactExpandOptions(Array.Empty<string>())
        {
          Interactions = new RelatedInteractionsExpandOptions("IpInfo", "WebVisit")
        };
      }

      var contactReference = new ContactReference(contactId);
      var contact = client.Get(contactReference, options);
      if (contact == null)
      {
        throw new ContactNotFoundException($"No Contact with id [{contactId}] found");
      }

      return contact;
    }
  }
}

One more change is the configuration. It is almost the same as in Sitecore 8, but we don't need to change the goals-query anymore - instead we have to patch the GetGoals in the same ExperienceProfileContactViews pipeline.

<sitecore>
  <pipelines>
    <group groupName="ExperienceProfileContactViews">
      <pipelines>
        <goals>
          <processor patch:after="*[@type='Sitecore.Cintel.Reporting.Contact.Goal.Processors.ConstructGoalsDataTable, Sitecore.Cintel']"
             type="MyNamespace.AddGoalDataColumn, MyProject" />
          <processor patch:after="*[@type='Sitecore.Cintel.Reporting.Contact.Goal.Processors.PopulateGoalsWithXdbData, Sitecore.Cintel']"
             type="MyNamespace.FillGoalData, MyProject" />
          <processor patch:instead="*[@type='Sitecore.Cintel.Reporting.ReportingServerDatasource.Goals.GetGoals, Sitecore.Cintel']"
             type="MyNamespace.GetGoals, MyProject" />
        </goals>
      </pipelines>
    </group>
  </pipelines>
</sitecore>

Final step - core database

As Jonathan mentioned, we do need to add a new item in the core database to display our new column in the list of Goals. Create this item under the path /sitecore/client/Applications/ExperienceProfile/Contact/PageSettings/Tabs/Activity/Activity Subtabs/Goals/GoalsPanel/Goals and set a descriptive HeaderText and a DataField value that matches the schema name.

Your result should look like this:

I woud like to thank Jonathan Robbins for his original blog post and Jarmo Jarvi for his answer on SSE.