Enable Robot Detection in 10.1 Forms

Question

After upgrading from 9.3 to 10.1, the 'Robot detection enabled' checkbox is uncheackable in form settings. Compared with docs:

• Xdb enabled
• XdbTracking enabled
• AutoDetectBots enabled
• @Html.Sitecore().VisitorIdentification() is used on the layout

What else should I check to make it configurable?

Answer 1

There are 4 factors which have impact on the checkbox:

• Xdb.Enabled setting
• Xdb.Tracking.Enabled setting
• Analytics.AutoDetectBots setting
• and result of XdbSettings.HasValidLicense call.

If I remember correctly, if you can open /sitecore/client/Applications/ExperienceAnalytics/Dashboard url without errors, that means that license is valid for xDB.

Have you changed any of the settings or license file after you tried Forms Editor for the first time? Maybe it's cached that checkbox should be disabled?

You can try the following url /formbuilder/load?id=&sc_formmode=new&sc_formlang=en&sc_site=shell&_=SOME_RANDOM_VALUE and see the source of the response. It's not easy to read it but you should see something like

isRobotDetectionAvailable":true,"

or false.

If you see true in response, try new incognito browser or potentially even recycle Sitecore.

I checked that in Sitecore 10.1.1 FormViewModel depends on IRobotDetection. Check in showconfig if you have an implementation of IRobotDetection registered, most probably like that:

<register 
  serviceType="Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Tracking.IRobotDetection, Sitecore.ExperienceForms"
  implementationType="Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Analytics.Tracking.RobotDetection, Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Analytics"
  lifetime="Transient"
  patch:source="Sitecore.ExperienceForms.Tracker.config"/>

In Sitecore 10.1.0 there is no IRobotDetection. Instead there is RobotDetectionHelper which uses the following code:

public static bool IsRobotDetectionAvailable => 
  Settings.GetBoolSetting("Xdb.Enabled", false) && 
  Settings.GetBoolSetting("Xdb.Tracking.Enabled", false) && 
  Settings.GetBoolSetting("Analytics.AutoDetectBots", false);

You may create a test page or just try it in debug to see what are the values of those setting in your web app and which of them is causing issues.