IMPORTANT UPDATE Feb 18th, 2021 : All Adobe DTM properties are about to enter read only mode. If you haven’t started your migration to Adobe Launch, you should do so urgently.
If you would like some advice on how to start the migration process, please get in touch with us via contact@maxisdigital.com.au or on 0433 816 879
If you are still using Adobe DTM to manage your analytics and digital marketing tags, then the clock is ticking on your ongoing ability to be able to edit your tags.
There are two migration milestones approaching as outlined in this post from Adobe – Note these dates have been shifted back throughout 2020 due to the Covid-19 situation, but it seems they will not be moved again.
In summary, the following milestones are fast approaching…
- Milestone 2 – February 22, 2021 where all DTM properties will move to read only state
- Milestone 3 – April 13, 2021 where all DTM servers will be decommissioned.
So at the time of writing this article, there are 5 months to go, and then only 2 more before DTM is completely decommissioned.
Thankfully, Adobe have said that any previously published libraries will not be impacted by milestone 3, and presumably if you have migrated to Launch and are still using your DTM snippet, then that will be unaffected also.
What options do I have?
Adobe have provided many features and support content to assist with the migration, however there is no denying that a simple one-click migration is unlikely to meet everyone’s needs.
For reference, here are a few starting points from Adobe’s documentation:
- https://docs.adobe.com/help/en/launch/using/reference/upgrade/overview.html
- https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/core-services-learn/tutorials/launch-web/migrate-from-dynamic-tag-manager-to-launch.html
There are fundamental differences between Adobe Launch and Adobe DTM and as such a completely hands off, one click migration is almost always not going to be sufficient.
Some of the things to watch out for include:
- Use of deprecated or simply removed DTM functions that you may have been using which will either completely fail or return unexpected results
- Differences in the way Adobe Analytics tracking calls are initiated, for example Adobe DTM had the ability to automatically trigger page view calls, yet some customers manually restricted this. This customisation does not migrate well in the default migration tool.
- Potential timing issues of when your migrated tags will fire, particularly relating to Adobe Target
- Latest Adobe library functionality such as GDPR compliance, and the latest user permissions functionality that this offers
The fact that you can keep your pre-existing DTM include snippet on your site is a great feature meaning that everything can be managed via the DTM and Launch interfaces without having to get your site code updated straight away.
However we do recommend to at least start this process of updating your code snippets with your site development team. You can still migrate to Launch with the DTM snippet and then update to the new snippet at a later date – or in fact use both the Launch and DTM snippets.
Some other options to consider…
Depending on how many rules you still have in a DTM implementation, you might consider starting from scratch again in setting up your new property. This could be a good opportunity to look at how you architect your tags and for example, take a step back and approach a more efficient and robust architecture such as Layering in your tag manager – see our recent article on this – https://www.maxisdigital.com.au/blog/adobe-launch-layering-within-your-tag-manager/
Another option worth seriously considering is to use the DTM to Launch migration tool that Adobe provides within DTM, and then copy a selection of Rules from the newly migrated Launch property into a brand new Launch property. This way you can save a lot of time manually moving things between platforms but also only selectively move the tags you actually want to migrate across. Note however you lose the ability to re-use the old DTM code snippet with this approach.
To summarise, the clock is ticking on this and there really should be no excuse not to start the process for moving across to Adobe Launch as soon as possible. There are numerous support articles and services available to make the transition or of course you can always seek help from those of us who have done this many times already 🙂
If you would like some advice on how to start the migration process, please get in touch with us via contact@maxisdigital.com.au or on 0433 816 879
Recent Comments