Missing Event Context Schema details and Examples

[cscrewvala]

Issue in ./help/product-recommendations/verify.md

I have had several partners and customers confused how to implement events or debug events when they don't work. It seems we don't include documentation of the required context data object schema and contexts or distinguish how to verify events and context data that are sent to the adobeDatalayer are actually sent to Sensei. This confuses partners and merchants, leading to them giving up trying to implement Recommendations, blaming Adobe and frustrated with not being able to implement it. Support resources do not seem to suggest this either, leading to more frustration.

Even with this clearer documentation and better verification process in place, there's still no way to truely validate Sensei received the event and is happy with it at a granular level, to fully verify everything is working, and thus that recommendations will being doing a good job to deliver value to the customer. You can only see the % indicators in the Admin panel against recommendation types, and data in the reports, as a soft secondary indicator. If these aren't showing there's no way of properly debugging to fix things - only the browser methods - there's no feedback from Sensei to say "all good - event received and correctly formatted". If there is a way, please do include it on this page.

Suggestions:

• Github events documentation has the required Context data objects and their schema specified for each event that needs to be sent. These examples of each event, the required context data, and the context data schema for each context data type should be moved into explicit Experience League pages and linked from this page.

• Advise that you can see events that have been received in the datalayer 'adobeDatalayer' by using Chrome Dev Tools > Console > typing adobeDatalayer and clicking enter, then expanding to see events and all associated data. Include a screencap.

• Snowplow chrome extension - there is a separate chrome extension to the Snowplow Analytics Debugger, called Snowplow Inspector, which is much better laid out and easier to read https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snowplow-inspector/maplkdomeamdlngconidoefjpogkmljm
  Guide https://docs.snowplow.io/docs/testing-debugging/snowplow-inspector/overview/

• Advise that after verifying events and required context data is seen in the adobeDatalayer, you can then verify the event data actually being sent to Sensei (you can see the event has "Collector : commerce.adobedc.net") with the required Context data objects, by using Snowplow (I have seen occasions where the required context data is in the adobeDatalayer, but some context data is not included in the sent to)

[jeff-matthews]

Thanks for the report @cscrewvala. I created an internal Jira ticket to track work on this (COMDOX-1007). I'll provide updates here as well as we make progress.