Setting up and testing xConnect can be a challenge – especially in on premise setups. Are all the certificates set up? Are all databases up and connection strings correct?
Initiially, tracking, processing and reporting can be somewhat of a black box because to see it working correctly i.E. to test experience profile functionality, you’ll have to first write code to identify a contact through a form submit, start a session with interactions, trigger identification and wait for your session to expire and wait for processing / reporting in order for your contact to show up in the expirence profile manager.
To aid with this, I have ported my trusted little xDB Helper over to Sitecore 9+ / xConnect. Because of the many API and conceptual changes, this was a re-write from scratch. The source code is available on Github.
How does the helper help?
After installing, you can access the page through
/sitecore%20modules/Web/xConnectHelper/xConnectHelper.aspx?key=<yourkey>
On this page you can…
- View status information on the current Tracker config and collection service connection
- View basic contact facets
- Set one or multiple identifiers for the current contact
- Set basic contact facets
- Flush current session which immediately triggers processing
Some possible use cases:
I want to check the xConnect connection:
If there is a connection problem, this will be immediately shown on the xConnectHelper page. Also, if the tracker is not active becaues of config or license issues.
I want to check if data is written to the collection and reporting db:
Interact with your website and then hit flush current session. Processing of your contact and interactions will immediately start and data should be visible in the databases within seconds.
I want to test contact search / experience profile:
The experience profile manager only lists identified contacts. You can set an identifier for your contact, then flush session. Your contact should show in the list within a few seconds.
How to install
- Clone Repo
- Build and publish to your site.
- Set a hard-to guess key in App_Config/Modules/xConnectHelper/xConnectHelper.config
- Access your page through /sitecore%20modules/Web/xConnectHelper/xConnectHelper.aspx?key=yourkey
Important Note: Because this tool is made to debug current contacts and interactions in-session, it can not be used as a regular Sitecore admin page and is therefore publicly accessible (ony restricted by your access key). You are responsible for setting appropriate measures to regulate access to this page.