In the recent releases, Sitecore has moved from a Monolith software approach to a Micro service based one. We have already seen this in other modules like Sitecore Javascript Services(JSS) and Sitecore Cortex. The Sitecore Universal Tracker is a headless API Micro service to track data from mobile apps, IoT, AR, VR and other emerging channels into Sitecore xDB.

Universal Tracker is a collection of services that allow capturing of data across multiple channels, as and when the interactions happen

You might ask yourself, isn’t that xConnect? No, its not. xConnect only accepts immutable history and is designed for trusted service communication – Authentication only, no authorization. Universal Tracker is required to not expose xConnect. Hence, the universal tracker allow capturing of data from multiple channels like Sitecore Websites, Non – Sitecore Websites, Mobile Devices, IoT devices etc. The key difference between xConnect and Universal Tracker is that whereas xConnect collects information regarding completed interactions, Universal Tracker collects information as soon as the interactions occur and submits those to xConnect, when complete.

                                                

Architecture

There are 3 major components of Sitecore Universal Tracker:      

1. Collection Service – A.Net Core Web API service, as the name suggests, is responsible for the collection of interactions/events from various channels and stores them temporarily in SQL.
2. Processing Service – A .Net Core Web API service processes the interactions captured by  the Collection service and sends the processed interactions to Sitecore xConnect. The interactions are processed by channels and custom filters can be defined for each channel.
3. Interaction Cache – A component that consists of database schemas for MS SQL and Azure databases, where the interactions are stored temporarily before being handed over to xConnect.
   
                              

There are 3 Pipelines that can be used to manipulate the interactions data.

• Pre-filter – To filter out interactions, aggregate multiple interactions etc.
• Enrichment – To manipulate the interactions, add extra information if required.
• Post-filter – To process the final data before it is sent to xConnect.

OOTB all these pipelines are empty.

Scaling

The Universal Tracker is built to scale. All the components along with the Universal Tracker itself can be scaled to suit the needs of any environment. There can be multiple collection services, in case there are numerous channels. The processing service can be scaled if the data being captured is large, compared to the data being sent to xConnect.

Scaling Collection Service

A scenario that has numerous interactions but low processing:

                                            

Scaling Processing Service

A scenario where the number of interactions is less, but the data is processed heavily before being sent to xConnect.

                                               

Scaling Universal Tracker

Total scaling to have multiple instances of Universal tracker.

                                               

Implementation

After setting up the Sitecore Universal Tracker by following the guide, there should be two new services; one for Processing and one for Collection along with a new database in SQL server.

Processing Service

The status page of the processing service displays connections for both the SQL Server and xConnect Client as the processing server interacts with both services.

Collection Service

The Collection status page only displays the connection to the SQL server, as it does not directly communicate with the xConnect client.

Before starting, we need to check a few things.

1. The channel that is to be used must be registered with the Universal Tracker.

In the Universal Tracker, only Web, Offline and Mobile channels are registered. If you use any other channel, it needs to be registered with Universal Tracker in the following configuration.

\Sitecore.Tracking.Processing.Service\sitecore\Sitecore.Tracking.Processing.ChannelManagement\PipelinesConfig\channelTypes.json

1. Anonymous contacts are being indexed by xConnect.

If you want to index anonymous contacts visiting the website, we need to enable IndexAnonymousContactData setting in the following configs:    

xconnectpath\root\App_data\jobs\continuous\IndexWorker\App_data\Config\Sitecore\SearchIndexer\sc.Xdb.Collection.IndexerSettings.xml

xconnectpath\root\App_data\Config\Sitecore\SearchIndexer\sc.Xdb.Collection.IndexerSettings.xml

1. Disabling WebVisitFilter

Since the interactions captured by Universal Tracker are not Page Views or Web visits, these interactions are filtered out by the WebVisit Interaction Filter. In order to disable this filter, go to the following config.

sitecorewebpath\App_Config\Sitecore\ExperienceAnalytics\Sitecore.ExperienceAnalytics.Aggregation.config

and key in the following line.

<InteractionFilter type="Sitecore.ExperienceAnalytics.Aggregation.Filters.WebVisitFilter, Sitecore.ExperienceAnalytics.Aggregation" />

Submitting Interactions

Interactions in Universal Tracker can be submitted either by using the Sitecore provided SDK or Postman.

Sitecore SDK

Here are the steps to send an Interaction to Universal Tracker using Sitecore SDK.

1. Create a project in Visual Studio. This can be a desktop application, console application or any other.
2. Install Sitecore Mobile SDK for Universal Tracker for the project using Nuget Package Manager.
3. Add the following code to the Main function of the Application.

private static void Main(string[] args)
string instanceUrl = "http://sitecore.tracking.collection.service";
string channelId = "27b4e611-a73d-4a95-b20a-811d295bdf65";
string definitionId = "01f8ffbf-d662-4a87-beee-413307055c48";
var defaultInteraction = UTEntitiesBuilder.Interaction()
                                           .ChannelId(channelId)
                                           .Initiator(InteractionInitiator.Contact)
                                           .Contact("jsdemo", "demo")
                                           .Build();
using (var session = SitecoreUTSessionBuilder.SessionWithHost(instanceUrl)
      .DefaultInteraction(defaultInteraction)
                                   .BuildSession())
{
                var eventRequest = UTRequestBuilder.EventWithDefinitionId(definitionId)
                                                   .Timestamp(DateTime.Now).Build();
                var eventResponse = await session.TrackEventAsync(eventRequest);
                Console.WriteLine("Track EVENT RESULT: " + eventResponse.StatusCode);
}

                instanceUrl 🡺Url of the UAT collection service.
                channelId 🡺 Guid of the channel used. This needs to be registered with Universal Tracker.
                definationId 🡺 Guid of the event to be triggered (Goal, Outcome etc.)

1. The following references need to be added for the code to work properly.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Sitecore.UniversalTrackerClient.Entities;
using Sitecore.UniversalTrackerClient.Request.RequestBuilder;
using Sitecore.UniversalTrackerClient.Session.SessionBuilder;

1. If everything is setup correctly, you should be able to see the following output:
   
   
   
   More information regarding the Universal Tracker SDK can be found here