Personalize a component using outcomes

Question

I would like to personalize a component depending on whether a certain outcome has been triggered in the last 30 days.

In my opinion the condition below should be able to get the job done:

where the specific outcome was registered during a past or current interaction and when the number of elapsed days compares to number and when the past number of interactions compares to number

With the parameters filled in that would be:

where the name-of-my-outcome outcome was registered during a past or current interaction and when the number of elapsed days is less than 30 and when the past number of interactions is not equal to 0

After registering the outcome the condition was validated as true, as expected.

Then I wanted to test if the condition would be false after 30 days. Since I am unable to wait for 30 days to check if the elapsed days behave correctly I changed "is less than 30 days" to the following values:

• is less than 0 days => condition is still validated as true. Expected false..
• is greater than 30 days => condition is still validated as true. Expected false..
• is not equal to 0 => condition is validated as false, which was expected.
• is not equal to 1 => condition is validated as true, which was expected.

This leaves me with two questions:

• Does the number of elapsed days in the above condition apply on the elapsed days since the outcome has been registered or does it check another timestamp like the last visit?
• Do the "is greater than" and "is lesser than" operators work correctly in Sitecore 8.2 Initial?

Answer 1

I've taken a look at this and have been able to reproduce the same problem. Everything is fine for outcomes in the current interaction, but previous interactions aren't behaving as expected.

After digging into it, it's actually due to a bug in Sitecore that has been there since these conditions were first introduced in Sitecore 8.1, and is still present in the initial release of Sitecore 9.0.

The bug

The error lays within the FilterKeyBehaviorCacheEntriesByInteractionConditions method of the HasEventOccurredCondition<T> abstract base class that these conditions use, which you can see by decompiling the Sitecore.Analytics assembly:

if (ConditionsUtility.GetInt32Comparer(this.NumberOfElapsedDaysOperatorId) == null)
    return Enumerable.Empty<KeyBehaviorCacheEntry>();

Func<int, int, bool> numberOfPastInteractionsComparer = ConditionsUtility.GetInt32Comparer(this.NumberOfPastInteractionsOperatorId);

if (numberOfPastInteractionsComparer == null)
    return Enumerable.Empty<KeyBehaviorCacheEntry>();

// ... some code removed ...

if (numberOfPastInteractionsComparer((DateTime.UtcNow - entries.Key.InteractionStartDateTime).Days, this.NumberOfElapsedDays))
    return numberOfPastInteractionsComparer(i + 2, this.NumberOfPastInteractions);

As you can see from the above code, a function is never defined that uses NumberOfElapsedDaysOperatorId. At the end of the code, the numberOfPastInteractionsComparer function is actually used for both the elapsed days and past interactions comparisons.

So to use your example:

where the name-of-my-outcome outcome was registered during a past or current interaction and when the number of elapsed days is less than 30 and when the past number of interactions is not equal to 0

This means that the is less than operator is never used, and instead is not equal is used for both operations. This explains why your two examples that used is not equal worked as expected.

Fix

Until this is fixed, you can workaround this by decompiling and reimplementing the conditions and their base condition, in this case Sitecore.Analytics.Rules.Conditions.OutcomeWasRegisteredDuringPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition and Sitecore.Analytics.Rules.Conditions.HasEventOccurredCondition<>. The new base condition should have the method altered like so:

Func<int, int, bool> numberOfElapsedDaysComparer = ConditionsUtility.GetInt32Comparer(NumberOfElapsedDaysOperatorId);

if (numberOfElapsedDaysComparer == null)
    return Enumerable.Empty<KeyBehaviorCacheEntry>();

Func<int, int, bool> numberOfPastInteractionsComparer = ConditionsUtility.GetInt32Comparer(this.NumberOfPastInteractionsOperatorId);

if (numberOfPastInteractionsComparer == null)
    return Enumerable.Empty<KeyBehaviorCacheEntry>();

// ... some code removed ...

if (numberOfElapsedDaysComparer((DateTime.UtcNow - entries.Key.InteractionStartDateTime).Days, this.NumberOfElapsedDays))
    return numberOfPastInteractionsComparer(i + 2, this.NumberOfPastInteractions);

Once you have created these, you would then need to set the Type field to your new type in the existing Sitecore condition, i.e. /sitecore/system/Settings/Rules/Definitions/Elements/Visit/Outcome was registered during a past or current interaction.

Notes

It's worth noting that the buggy HasEventOccurredCondition<> is derived by the following conditions, so these will all exhibit the same fault and would also need to be patched to work correctly:

• CampaignWasTriggeredPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition
• ChannelOfPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition
• GoalWasTriggeredDuringPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition
• OutcomeWasRegisteredDuringPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition
• PageEventWasTriggeredDuringPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition
• VenueOfPastOrCurrentInteractionCondition

These all have slight variants too that allow for Custom Data to be taken into account that will have the same issue.