Omniture SiteCatalyst 13 Release
By Craig Danuloff
From their email:
In this release, we are providing new tools designed to increase your productivity and effectiveness. New features and functionality include;The industry’s first portfolio of Business Optimizations: Business Optimizations package best practice expertise and technology into discrete offerings that help you achieve faster time-to-value from Web 2.0 technologies including:
- Social Networking
- Blog Value
- Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
- Dynamic Search
- Visitor Interaction Profiling
The industry’s first self-service administration console. The Online Business Administration Console helps you increase productivity and respond to business change more quickly through a graphical, self-service configuration tool.
Key features of the console include:
- Management of user access and permissions for individuals, groups and functions by roles and entitlements
- Fast and accurate creation, configuration and management of thousands of report suites which includes pre-configured suite templates tailored for specific industries and site types
- Support for the deployment and management of multiple currencies and languages
- Automatic generation of collection code by application type, including Web pages, wireless devices and rich Internet applications
- Open access to external systems through a Web Services API and software developer kit to automate all administrative functionality
That first item sounds great - looks like they're starting to address the 'death of the page' and the way in which blogs and web2.0 will/may replace it. The new Admin console looks great too (They've posted a training video on that one so I was able to take a look) and will save those who admin SiteCatalyst implementations a lot of time.
I hope we're safe in assuming that blog support and new admin tools do not a full digit upgrade make, so that leaves a lot more surprises for tomorrow. Here are a few random items from my personal wish-list:
- Completely revitalized charting. We currently have the charting equivalent of MacPaint - I want Photoshop.
- The ability to override date ranges stored in dashboards. Those dang things take way to long to create for every date range I want covered.
- Automatic treatment of Natural Search as a campaign via Paid Search Detection. If you tag all your other traffic sources, why leave organic search out of the reports.
- A toggle switch to turn 'None' off. Why do I want the data not included in what I'm looking at overwhelming my charts?
- An easy way to add a group of pages in a single slot in Fallout Reports. It would make landing page testing (and lots of other occurances) way easier to deal with.
These and a few dozen more important needs were discussed at the Omniture Summit in March, and I can't wait to see what the "New Features Fairy" actually has in store for us. I'll post some reports and thoughts as soon as we get a look.
Update: 12:35am EST, and Version 13 now appears in the log-on pull down menu, but when attempting to log in, 'access to that version' is not yet enabled.
Update: After using Version 13 for a day, it looks like the Admin features and web2.0 support ARE just about all that is there. I've added the 'Release Notes' after the jump. I hope to speak with someone at Omniture on Monday and better understand this release, and post more thoughts.
OMNITURE SiteCatalyst 13 Release Notes
===========================
SiteCatalyst 13 delivers a new Omniture Administration Console designed to reduce the complexity and increase the speed of managing online business.
It improves time to market by decreasing report suite setup and configuration time while improving report suite setup accuracy. It also allows for integration with external systems to optimize administration through automated processes. The Administration Console provides a single place for managing all Omniture products -- empowering users to more easily manage their online business and deploy new strategies with fewer IT resources.
New features of SiteCatalyst 13 include:
- Omniture Administration Console:
Through a powerful user interface, or using the web services API, you can now create new report suites, manage configurations, view and manage billing services, generate and archive code, adjust international privacy settings, administer user permissions and much more.
- Web Services API, or Web Interface Access
1. API
o Programmatically synchronize Omniture platform settings with external systems through a robust Web Services API. Using the systems your IT teams are designed around, connect directly to the Omniture platform and manage users, report suites, privacy, billing information, and more.
2. Web Interface
o Leverage the full capabilities of the Omniture Administration Console through a powerful and intuitive interface, with drag and drop configurations and task oriented navigation, directly within SiteCatalyst.
Using either the API or the Web Interface, you can...
o Configure Reporting:
+ Easily control the business rules for populating reports and update the names of those reports.
o Configure User Groups and Permissions:
+ Add or delete users with appropriate levels of permissioning and monitor and audit system usage.
o Manage Information Security:
+ Privacy policy manager and IP address eliminator.
o Manage Billing and Transactions:
+ View billing and manage traffic level notifications.
o Create New Report Suites Based on Pre-configured Best Practice Templates:
+ Out-of-the-box, for specific industries and site types that leverage the best practices across thousands of customer business models.
o Manage and Archive Code Versions:
+ Code generation, versioning and archiving to simplify the measurement across all channels of customer interaction including web pages and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as Flex/Flash, and AJAX.
- Mac Support:
o SiteCatalyst 13 increases native support for Apple systems. Apple users can now leverage the SiteCatalyst Dashboard player from the Mac desktop, and DirectAccess, built on the native Mac widget technology.
+ Dashboard Player:
# View dashboards on your Mac through a screensaver, dedicated display, or a separate screen for continuous updates on key SiteCatalyst reports.
+ DirectAccess
# Link directly to dashboards from your Mac desktop for quick access to SiteCatalyst reporting.
+ Browser & Operation System Recognition:
# Improved recognition of Safari browser and Mac OS versions for reporting.
* Processing Rules Improvements:
o SiteCatalyst 13 improves data processing for more advanced search engine detection and increased browser and operating system recognition.
- Lost Password Recovery:
o Lost passwords can now be reset through an automated process instead of requiring administrator contact.
Comments
Thanks for the update. Some exciting news there.
Posted by: Lars | September 8, 2006 5:36 AM
I would like to add my personal wish: any way to use their chart comparison tool to compare Last Period to Date with This period to date. Someone there believes that Normalization does this but I have never seen it work and they have never been able to show it to me. Even Best Practices admitted to me that it isn't possible right now.
Robbin
Posted by: Robbin Steif | September 8, 2006 10:16 AM